Spin rate is down across the league as Major League Baseball has begun its crackdown on the use of foreign substances, but a former Met thinks it’s only a matter of time before teams find a way to get around the new protocols and find ways to gain an advantage once again.
Nelson Figueroa, drafted by the Mets in 2008, joined Moose and Maggie on Wednesday to talk about the league’s new initiative to rid the game of substances like Spider Tack, which allow pitchers to add hundreds of rpm to their pitches and gain a significant advantage over hitters, who were struggling at a historic rate in the early parts of the 2021 season. As we’ve seen with performance enhancing drugs, the Mitchell Report and fallout from a crackdown of leaguewide testing helped diminish its use across baseball from the epidemic it once was, but some players, including Robinson Cano, are still getting caught and suspended from time to time.
Figueroa thinks it will be no different with sticky substances.
“As much as we’re using analytics and looking at video to check tendencies from pitchers, you’re checking tendencies from umpires now and what exactly is being checked, how it’s being checked, when it’s being checked,” Figueroa said. “If you have a starter who only gets checked in the first inning, after that, he could put anything back on when he goes into the clubhouse…I think that’s why [Joe] Girardi wanted [Max] Scherzer to get checked again.”
Per the new MLB policy, starting pitchers have to undergo more than one mandatory check, so it may be difficult to know when it is “safe” to add a substance to a glove, cap or belt, especially when the checks are erratic. Gerrit Cole waited to be checked after his first inning of work on Tuesday night, but wasn’t checked until the third and sixth innings. But there could be other ways to work around the new rules if teams and pitchers take the time to figure out how to pull it off.
“They’re gonna look for the routines by the umpires,” Figueroa said. “The umpiring crew looks miserable about it. It looks like they’re at gunpoint when they do this. They actually walk up going ‘I have to do this. I don’t want to do this, but I have to do this.’”
Pitchers who may see their production decline significantly may be more motivated to find ways around the new rule. Aces like Gerrit Cole, who have shown their ability to remain consistently effective with a much lower spin rate, may be different, but Figueroa wouldn’t be surprised if pitchers are already looking at how the protocols are being executed and plotting their next competitive advantage, continuing the long line of crossing boundaries in baseball.
“There’s always gonna be ways to cheat…guys are gonna do it,” Figueroa said. “Will someone get caught? Of course…there’s always gonna be stuff that’s clear, something you can spray on, something you can rub on, something you can hide in some way to get past these checkpoints. You’re going to use what you can to get hitters out because there’s a game going on and you want to keep your job in Major League Baseball.”
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