Trevor Bauer, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers, explained how pitchers cheat with banned sticky substances during a national broadcast on Sunday.
Bauer, who’s been suspected of using the banned substances, did a live interview with the Sunday Night Baseball on ESPN broadcast crew during the Dodgers’ game against the Chicago Cubs and explained how the substances help improve grip and spin rate.
“It keeps the ball stuck to your fingers longer so that you can actually apply the force in a way that’s tangential to the surface of the ball, which increased spin,” Bauer said. “It’s unclear whether the majority of the spin rate increase comes from the position that it allows you to get to, or the increased friction on the ball, or a combination of both, but that’s really where the performance enhancement comes from.”
MLB recently cracked down on pitchers who use foreign substances with a new policy that requires umpires to regularly search players for the substances and harsh penalties for the pitchers caught using them.
Bauer has spoken out against MLB for the new policy, calling the decision “a mess.”
“MLB was telling players and teams all year, do not change anything, we’re not going to enforce it this year. And now, all of a sudden, everything is changing,” Bauer said during an interview with Sportsnet Los Angeles. “They haven’t thought through a lot of these things, and they’re making umpires the judge, jury, and executioner of these things.”
“The best analogy for this is you basically have people who have never seen traffic before and have no radar guns, and you tell them, ‘Hey, you have to tell who’s speeding and who’s not,” he added.
Bauer will make $38 million this year as part of a three-year, $102 million contract with the Dodgers.
Other star pitchers have spoken out against the policy, including New York Yankees ace Gerrit Cole and Tampa Bay Rays ace Tyler Glasnow.
Other pitchers expressed their grievances on the field with demonstrative reactions to the regular inspections, including one player who started to take off his pants when umpires approached him.
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