Everyone is trying to pinpoint why offense is down across baseball, but perhaps it is because of an advantage the pitchers are using.
MLB announced prior to the season that it would be cracking down on pitchers who abuse using foreign substances on baseballs, but many players around the league are still raising concerns.
MLB insider Ken Rosenthal recently spoke to many players who anonymously raised this issue, but Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto addressed the problem earlier in the week after a 3-1 loss to the Marlins.
“Everyone has swing-and-miss stuff from top to bottom, and it’s not because everyone got so much better in the last three years,” he told reporters, per Rosenthal. “To be honest, a lot of that stuff helps a lot. Let the hitters take steroids and [pitchers] can do that [to keep pace].”
The latter was sarcasm from the Phillies catcher, but the use of foreign substances is increasingly being compared to PED use of baseball’s past.
An anonymous NL pitcher told Rosenthal: “It’s the same thing as [Sammy] Sosa and [Mark] McGwire bopping all those home runs. Everyone knew, at least everyone on the inside, knew what they were doing. And then you have guys who are like, ‘I better do something or I won’t have a job.’ And then you have guys on the fence like, ‘Will I sell my soul for ‘X’ amount of money?’ And a lot of them are going to say yes.”
Through the first seven weeks of the 2021 season hitters are batting .236 with a 24.1 percent strikeout rate. There’s been six no-hitters, which have come against a combined three teams.
“The league talks about leveling the playing field, but how is this level?” the NL pitcher added.
MLB said it is doing more, and threatened discipline to players who do use it, but no one has been caught through mid-May. Dodgers pitcher Trevor Bauer had his balls collected by the league to be inspected, which he said was done only to collect data.
Nothing has come of it since.
An MLB official told Rosenthal “the Central office data collection is ongoing.”
White Sox hitting coach Frank Menechino does not understand how MLB is missing it, though.
“I’ve seen three or four cases this year where I’m like, ‘Are you s---ing me?’” he said. “If MLB is watching this, how are they missing this one?”
Added the NL pitcher: “So, what, we’re taking a pause on this? We’re not going to enforce the rules for a year? What about guys trying to get paid? What about guys fighting for jobs?”
Realmuto, who acknowledged other factors for offense being down, said that the substance issue is real and pointed out how they are doing it.
“I would just crack down on the substances they use on their hands,” he said. “You see pitchers out there all game long doing this [touching his mitt]. They’re not doing anything about it. I think if they cracked down on that, that would honestly help the offense a lot, get the ball in play more often and [result in] less swing and missing.”
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