Steve Webb
LOS ANGELES — Trevor was not amused. On the day that the new MLB rules against pitchers using foreign substances was announced, people from all over the baseball world weighed in on their opinions. Dodgers starter Trevor Bauer, never at a loss for words, jumped right into the fray, both on his own social media platforms, and in press interviews.
Bauer sees umps as getting too much power
“They haven’t thought through a lot of these things,” he said to SportsNet LA in pre-game interview on Tuesday. “They’ve just made umpires judge, jury, and executioner.” Bauer, whose name had been the subject of a lot of speculation in the run-up to Tuesday’s announcement was clearly unhappy with the vagueness of the rules and the difficulty that enforcement of these new rules would bring. “It’s a mess,” he concluded. “Typical MLB fashion. However, I will say that it is nice that four years later they are trying to do something about the integrity of the game, because I’ve been talking to them about this issue for four years, and they’ve done absolutely nothing.”
New policies have a lot of gray area
The new policy clarified punishments and procedures for detecting pitchers who were using illegal substances to increase their grip on the ball. Increased grip equals increased spin rate equals pitchers’ advantage equals decreased offense equals a boring product, the argument goes. According to an article in Baseball America, starting on June 21, the following enforcement measures will be in place:
– Starting pitchers will be checked multiple times per game and relievers will be checked either at the conclusion of the inning they entered or when they are removed from the game, whichever occurs first.
– If a player other than the pitcher is found to have applied a foreign substance to the baseball (i.e. a catcher or an infielder), both the position player and pitcher will be automatically ejected and suspended.
– Catchers will also be subject to routine inspections.
– Rosin bags will remain on the back of the mound and be used, but players are prohibited from mixing rosin with sunscreen or any other substance. As part of the memo, pitchers are advised “not to apply sunscreen during night games after the sun has gone down or when playing in stadiums with closed roofs.”
– Any club employee who encourages a player to use foreign substances, including managers and coaches, will be subject to “severe” discipline that includes the possibility of being placed on the Ineligible List.
– Teams may be sanctioned for failing to educate or police their players and staff on the rules and are subject to investigation from MLB in the event of repeat violations.
Even before his TV interview, Bauer took to social media to reinforce his point. On his Twitter feed, Bauer was in rare form on Tuesday: “To be clear, the memo is fine long term, and it will serve to level the playing field. That is a good thing,” he tweeted. “But to implement it mid season when for 3 months you’ve promised players and teams that nothing about your chosen enforcement of the rules would change this year and actively encouraged players to continue playing how that have in the past, that’s a lie.”
” There’s no integrity in that,” Bauer concluded. “So save it with the competitive integrity bullshit @mlb. All you care about is the bottom line of the business, and public perception negatively affecting it.”
Other Players across the league are complaining as well. After the Rays Tyler Glasnow went on the IL, he bluntly blamed the new policy, which he had been trying to follow even before this enforcement was announced. Bauer responded in typical Trevor fashion. “Only one of the MASSIVE problems with what @MLB is doing,” he said, sharing the news of Glasnow’s statement on Twitter. “They’ve knowingly swept this under the rug for 4 years. Now they implement a knee jerk reaction to shifting public perception. Hard to hear them talk about “competitive integrity” when they have no integrity to begin with.”
Shots have been fired. Clearly this problem is not going to go away with this new MLB policy memo. Whatever happens going forward, there is one thing you can be sure of. Trevor Bauer will have something to say about it.
