when asked a direct question about using illegal substances before last night's Yankees game in Minnesota.
After Twins third baseman Josh Donaldson pointed out the suspicious timing of four minor league pitchers being suspended for using substances and a crappy start from a possibly worried Cole two days later, the Yankees ace was asked if he had ever used Spider Tack ("considered the stickiest of subjects when it comes to the illegal stuff pitchers are using") to improve his grip and spin rates.
Cole, who will pitch Wednesday night, hemmed and hawed before immediately changing the subject.
Rather than proclaiming his innocence, which you would expect someone to do even if he was guilty, Cole decided to start rambling:
Cole stated his spin rates were down last week because he was "not being as good or as sharp as I wanted to be. Simple as that. . . . It doesn't make me happy [the innuendo and allegations]. I'm not thrilled about it. But as far as that, I have to just kind of leave it where it is."
Over the past two or three years, pitchers' illegal application to the ball of what they call "sticky stuff"—at first a mixture of sunscreen and rosin, now various forms of glue—has become so pervasive that one recently retired hurler estimates "80 to 90%" of pitchers are using it in some capacity. The sticky stuff helps increase spin on pitches, which in turn increases their movement, making them more difficult to hit. That's contributed to an offensive crisis that has seen the league-wide batting average plummet to a historically inept .236. (Sports Illustrated spoke with more than two dozen people; most of them requested anonymity to discuss cheating within their own organizations.)
From the dugout, players and coaches shake their heads as they listen to pitchers' deliveries. "You can hear the friction," says an American League manager. The recently retired pitcher likens it to the sound of ripping off a Band-Aid. . . .
In many clubhouses across the sport, the training room has become the scene of the crime: Pitchers head in there before games to swipe tongue depressors, which they use to apply their sticky stuff to wherever they choose to hide it, then return afterward to grab rubbing alcohol to dissolve the residue. Even that is not always sufficient. One National League journeyman reliever, who says he uses Pelican Grip Dip, a pine tar/rosin blend typically used by hitters to help grip their bats, has been flagged at airport security.
"They swab my fingers—and this is after showering and everything—and they're like, 'Hey, you have explosives on your fingers,'" he says. "I'm like, 'Well, I don't, but I'm sure that I have something that's not organic on there.'"
The MLB rule book bars pitchers from applying foreign substances to baseballs, but officials have so far done little to curb the practice. (MLB declined to comment but says it is focused on the issue.) . . .
"This should be the biggest scandal in sports," says another major league team executive.
As MLB dawdles, and batting averages dwindle, the use of substances has become all but institutionalized. . . . An AL reliever, who says he uses a mixture of sunscreen and rosin, recalls a spring-training meeting in 2019 in which the team's pitching coach told the group, "A lot of people around the league are using sticky stuff to make their fastballs have more lift. And if you're not using it, you should consider it, because you're kind of behind." . . . The NL reliever who uses Pelican says he played for a team that hired a chemist—away from another club—whose duties include developing sticky stuff. . . .
Never in the history of Major League Baseball has it been so hard to hit the ball. The league batting average would be the worst full-season number of all time. Nearly a quarter of batters have struck out, which would also be the feeblest performance ever. . . .
For more than a decade, pitchers have coated their arms in Bull Frog spray-on sunscreen, then mixed that with rosin to produce adhesive. They have applied hair gel, then run their fingers through their manes. They have brewed concoctions of pine tar and Manny Mota grip stick (essentially, pine tar in solid form), which are legal for hitters trying to grasp the bat. . . .
More recently, pitchers have begun experimenting with drumstick resin and surfboard wax. They use Tyrus Sticky Grip, Firm Grip spray, Pelican Grip Dip stick and Spider Tack, a glue intended for use in World's Strongest Man competitions and whose advertisements show someone using it to lift a cinder block with his palm. Some combine several of those to create their own, more sophisticated substances. They use Edgertronic high-speed cameras and TrackMan and Rapsodo pitch-tracking devices to see which one works best. Many of them spent their pandemic lockdown time perfecting their gunk. . . .
Experts do not entirely understand why sticky stuff works so well, but they agree that it does. . . .
[T]he biggest benefit of using sticky stuff is the way it contributes to spin. The faster a baseball spins, the more potential for movement it has. And movement is what makes a baseball so hard to hit. . . . One way to increase spin rate is to increase velocity. . . . [T]he most effective means is to produce friction, and the best way to do that is to smear gunk on the ball. . . .
For hitters, all this suddenly acquired extra movement is catastrophic. What was an elite spin rate in 2018 is now average. . . .
"I'm tired of hearing people say that players only want to hit home runs," says Rockies rightfielder Charlie Blackmon. "That's not why people are striking out. They're striking out because guys are throwing 97 mile-an-hour super sinkers, or balls that just go straight up with all this sticky stuff and the new-baseball spin rate. That's why guys are striking out, because it's really hard not to strike out." . . .
"There's some [pitchers] where, if you swing where your eyes tell you, you won't hit the ball, even if you're on time," Blackmon says. "I have to go out there and if my eyes tell me it's in one place, I have to swing to a different place. Which is hard to do. It's hard to swing and try and miss the ball. But there's some guys where you have to do it, because their ball and the spin rate or whatever is defying every pitch that you've seen come in over the course of your career. … I basically have to not trust my eyes that the pitch is going to finish where I think it's going to finish and swing in a different place, because the ball is doing something it has no business doing." . . .
If players have been doctoring the ball for a century, why is this all coming to a head now? Nearly everyone interviewed for this story mentioned one person in particular: Dodgers righthander Trevor Bauer.
In 2018, Bauer seemed to accuse the Astros of applying foreign substances to baseballs in a cryptic tweet replying to a comment about Houston's rotation. . . . He complained to reporters that by ignoring the problem, the league was sanctioning illegal behavior.
Bauer said he had done tests in a pitching lab and found that sticky stuff added about 300 rpm to his four-seam fastball. He wrote in a Players' Tribune essay that after eight years of trying, "I haven't found any other way [to increase spin rate] except using foreign substances."
He also tried to make his point on the field: He used Pelican in the first inning of a 2018 start and watched his four-seamer, which usually averaged about 2,300 rpm, tick up to 2,600 rpm. After the first inning, that number dropped back to normal.
"If I used that s---, I'd be the best pitcher in the big leagues," he told SI in 2019. "I'd be unhittable. But I have morals."
From March through August of that year, his four-seamer averaged 2,358 rpm, according to Statcast. In September, it jumped to 2,750. In 2020, when he won the Cy Young Award for the Reds, it was 2,779. This season, the first of a three-year, $102 million deal that makes him the highest-paid pitcher in history, it’s 2,835.
Before Bauer's spin rate jumped, he had an ERA of 4.04 and the 228th-best opponent batting average, at .241. Since the increase, those figures are 2.31 and an MLB-best .161. . . .
Through both his agent and the team, Bauer declined to make himself available for an interview. . . .
SI found that through June 2, the Dodgers had the highest increase in year-to-year [2020 to 2021] four-seam spin rate, at 7.01%. The next highest was 4.21%, by the White Sox. That increase and that gap are enormous. The Red Sox came in third, at 4.01%; the Nationals fourth, at 3.07%; and the Yankees fifth, at 2.94%. The league-average increase has been 0.52% this year. (All clubs declined or did not respond to requests for comment.)
"People need to understand the significance of spin," says one of the team executives. "It is every bit as advantageous as a [performance-enhancing drug]—except it has been sanctioned by the league and there are no [harmful] consequences for your body."
"We're just doing the same thing we did during the steroid era," says the other team executive. "We were oohing and ahhing at 500-plus-foot home runs. . . . A 101-mile-an-hour, 3,000-rpm cutter, isn't that the same thing as a 500-foot home run? It's unnatural." . . .
The tacit approval leaves everyone doing difficult moral math. At the moment, umpires generally rely on managers to request that they check a pitcher. Managers largely refuse to do so, in part because they know their own pitchers are just as guilty, and in part because they worry their team may someday acquire the pitcher in question. Executives and coaches who personally abhor the practice do not see much benefit in telling their own pitchers to knock it off, knowing that will accomplish little more than losing games and angering their employees. Fringe pitchers tell themselves that everyone is doing it—indeed, that the league's clumsy management of the game all but requires it. . . .
Four minor leaguers have so far this season been caught with substances, ejected and suspended for 10 games. (After one of those incidents, says a player who was there, relievers on both teams headed to the clubhouse to switch out their gloves.) . . .
Meanwhile, the league is weighing rule changes designed to increase offense. The minor leagues have begun experimenting with larger bases, a ban on infield shifts and a limit on pickoffs. If any of these show promise, the majors could adopt them.
"They talk about rule changes," says one of the team executives. "I think people would be absolutely shocked if they actually enforced this, how much you'll start to normalize things without rule changes." . . .
People familiar with the league's plans say that stepped-up enforcement is forthcoming—despite some teams' attempts at subterfuge. Once baseballs are out of play, they are supposed to be thrown into the home dugout, where they can be collected by MLB for analysis. Some teams, observers note, have tried tossing especially sticky balls into the visitors' dugout. Meanwhile, league officials plan to begin punishing offenders. Days or weeks from now, they will encourage teams to police their clubhouses, then instruct umpires to start checking pitchers more frequently. Offenders are to be ejected and suspended 10 games.
