Major League Baseball’s Newest Rule Change Has Been An Absolute Disaster

The first days of Major League Baseball’s crackdown on the use of foreign substances by pitchers have been interesting, to put it mildly. 

We saw a three-time CY Young winner examined by umpires three times in five innings, and a relief pitcher nearly took his pants off on the field. But don’t worry guys, the MLB commissioner thinks everything is going swimmingly. 

“My view is the first two days have gone very well,” Rob Manfred said in an interview with The Athletic. “We’ve had no ejections (for foreign substances), players in general have been extremely cooperative, the inspections have taken place quickly and between innings. Frankly, the data suggests that we are making progress with respect to the issues (in spin rate) that caused us to undertake the effort in the first place.”

Let’s take a step back. Manfred has no issue with the first two days of the implementation of the new rules, based on the fact that there have been no ejections. Is that accurate? While there haven’t been any ejections of players, Phillies manager Joe Girardi was ejected from Tuesday night’s game due to the ruckus caused by Max Scherzer being checked three times in four innings for foreign substances. There certainly was a connection between the ejection and the new rules. 

Mike Rizzo — general manager of the Washington Nationals — publicly ripped Girardi after the game, saying “It’s embarrassing for Girardi, it’s embarrassing for the Phillies, it’s embarrassing for baseball.”

Manfred was asked by The Athletic to dish on Rizzo’s comments, and declined. 

“I’m not going to, honestly,” Manfred said. “I’m not going to respond to Mike Rizzo’s comments, which I find to be intemperate. I am not going to get into that.”

After Tuesday’s game, Scherzer was asked about the new rules, and redirected the question to Manfred. 

“These are Manfred rules,” Scherzer said. “Go ask him. I’ve said enough.” 

“First of all, it would be incorrect, blatantly incorrect, to assume that the players and the union did not a) provide input into what we are doing and b) have additional opportunities to provide input that they did not take advantage of,” Manfred said in response to Scherzer’s comments. “The transparency that I owe is to the players. We were really transparent from the beginning of the year that this was an issue of concern to us and that things needed to change. That’s why we were collecting information. We were clear in the March memo we sent out if things didn’t change there was going to be discipline. We, around the owners meetings there was a ton of publicity around the fact that things had not changed. In fact they had gotten worse.”

“I just don’t see any secret about where this was headed and I know for a fact there was plenty of opportunity for input in the process.” 

One of the main concerns for fans of the game as well as players, is the current way of checking for foreign substances on pitchers. In the first few days, umpires have checked pitchers as they come off the mound between innings. It’s quickly started to come off as a public shaming, with pitchers being seen as the bad guys. Manfred was asked if the current process will remain, or if MLB will make adjustments as the season progresses. 

“I don’t like to put my feet in the sand. We are two days in. I just don’t have enough information to tell you that it’s ironclad or that it’s going to change. Really, the whole process is two years old, right? After we had the incident in Anaheim, we gave notice to the clubs that we were concerned about foreign substances on the baseball. We reiterated that concern in March. There was a lot of publicity about what we were finding and then (we) made the change with the June memo.”

“I think we have tried to stay flexible on the issue and learn. With respect to this last two days, I think it’s too soon to offer you any judgment on what’s going to happen (with future enforcement changes).”

Manfred is choosing to turn a blind-eye to what the players who actually participate in the games are saying. 

On Wednesday, New York Yankees pitcher Zach Britton called on Major League Baseball to come to the table with the players to discuss a better way of checking for substances. 

“I just think the optics are just absolutely embarrassing for our game, and that’s not what I want to wake up and read about regarding our game in the morning,” Britton said. “There’s a better way to do it. But it takes more than just me or other players saying it. It takes talking with MLB and sitting down and hashing something out to where we can enforce rules but not in the way that it’s being enforced.”

The checks for foreign substances are not going away, nor are the antics that come with them. The game of baseball will continue to endure embarrassing moments as players push back against the new rules, but apparently Rob Manfred doesn’t see this as an issue. 

Joe Morgan is the Sports Reporter for The Daily Wire. Most recently, Morgan covered the Clippers, Lakers, and the NBA for Sporting News. Send your sports questions to [email protected].

The views expressed in this piece are the author’s own and do not necessarily represent those of The Daily Wire.

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