Hand Wash Time: MLB Hypocritically Coming For Doctored Balls

MLB can play with the baseball all they want, but pitchers? No longer according to new league policies cracking down on doctored balls.

Was there a doctored ball in the house, asks MLB?

Better not be for much longer, according to a new shift in league policy announced Wednesday morning. That’s right, MLB is coming for those spitballs, or whatever else pitchers have been doing to modify those baseballs the last few seasons.

Sorry, Trevor Bauer.

Speculation has been rampant on pitchers using a variety of substances to boost spin rates for quite some time now. Bauer himself grabbed some headlines once for calling out Astros pitchers specifically. As insinuated above, there’s no shortage of people that think Bauer is the poster child for ball doctoring.

Now, by the book, tampering with the baseballs is cheating. The problem is the biggest tamperer of baseballs the last few seasons hasn’t been the Astros pitching staff. Or some faceless equipment manager. Or even Trevor Bauer.

It has been MLB.

Well, okay, technically the biggest tamperer is Rawlings I guess. Yet only at their client’s behest. Which actually makes MLB’s move to stop pitchers doctoring balls extremely hypocritical.

Why? Because MLB is effectively saying that only the league themselves can doctor balls. They’ve been doing it for years by altering the very structure of the baseball. That favors hitters, at the expense of pitchers. The very memo sent out today makes clear that the intention here is to favor hitters further, putting more balls in play. Banned substances- be it pine tar, snot, oil, or whatever- pump up the strikeouts, not the offense. And as we all know, those future MLB fans currently just watching the NBA that Rob Manfred is looking to convert only care about offense.  Players can’t get in the way of that.

Whatever increase in doctoring balls there has been is inarguably a response, in no small part, to the MLB policy of altering the baseball to artificially inflate offensive stats- home runs especially. That’s not to say it’s the primary factor- MLB hitters getting bigger, stronger, and being trained to elevate the ball all take up a larger share of the pie. But when the league itself seems to be stacking the deck against you, that has to be a significant motivator to think outside the box.

This is also not intended to excuse any form of cheating. Chemical enhancement via steroids, HGH, or anything else ingested or injected should remain out of bounds. Players who go that route, hitter or pitcher, deserve to face censure. They are public figures, and sending the message you can only be a big leaguer if you actually change the chemical make up of who you are seems like something most fans can agree we need to avoid.

But compared to steroids, or something over the top nefarious like sign stealing at the level of the Astros, how bad is using a little pine tar? And is it any worse than, say, changing the physical composition of the ball and spending a couple seasons denying it?

Not to mix metaphors, but MLB might want to look in the mirror before throwing that first stone. Glass houses and all.