Buck Showalter has been around baseball for decades, and is hardly surprised that the use of sticky substances by pitchers has become the issue it is now, seemingly reaching a boiling point with the league cracking down on security while Gerrit Cole dodges questions about his use of Spider Tack.
For Showalter, Spider Tack is just the latest in a long line of unspoken truths about the use of substances in baseball.
“This all started when guys were having trouble gripping a baseball in April and May when it’s cold and the ball is slick, we put this archaic thing called ‘mud’ on it,” Showalter told Moose & Maggie on Wednesday. “Think about it, still we’re putting that on…It’s kind of evolved, and they see there’s an edge, and anybody that doesn’t know they knew some of it wasn’t going on is being less than truthful.”
Showalter remembers the use of substances being an unspoken part of the game, before Michael Pineda was called out for pine tar as a Yankee and now players like Josh Donaldson and Trevor Bauer bringing sticky substance use to light in recent years, Donaldson as recently as this past week.
“There was many times in my career where I know the other guy has got something and my guy may have something just to grip the ball better so nobody gets hit and he knows where the ball is going,” Showalter said. “There was kind of a code where you don’t touch my guy and I don’t touch your guy, and we play a baseball game on even ground.”
But substances like Spider Tack have given pitchers an unfair edge, helping skyrocket spin rate as opposed to simply aiding with grip. But Showalter still sees the use of substances, perhaps not to the level of stickiness as Spider Tack, as part of the fabric of the current game, not just for pitchers.
“What I’d really like to see is Josh Donaldson go to home plate and hit without batting gloves or pine tar tonight,” Showalter said. “If he really wants to prove a point, go up there and really not be able to grip a bat tonight.”
Still, Donaldson’s comments along with recent reports of players being frustrated with Spider Tack have led to questions, specifically toward Cole, whose spin rate noticeably dropped in his last start as the league plans to become firmer in inspecting for banned substances.
“I think he handled it well,” Showalter said of Cole. “He didn’t, at any point, didn’t want to not be truthful. Sometimes you have to be careful of telling truths that might hurt innocent people, instead of saying something that might be proven to be not be completely truthful.”
While it’s assumed that a large number of pitchers, likely including Cole, use Spider Tack to gain an edge or level the playing field, Major League Baseball hasn’t presented a potential solution or uniform policy to counter the epidemic. Showalter has one potential fix to get the game back to being more evenly matched.
“Just put a universal tar rag back there, or a pine rag, something that the Players Association, everybody approves, and then if a pitcher is caught with anything, you got him,” Showalter said.
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