With all the focus on the pitch clock—and the other shiny new policies for umpires to enforce—it’s been easy to forget about the first big rulebook controversy of the decade. That would be “sticky stuff,” or foreign substances that pitchers can use to increase spin, and the weeks of drama that resulted from a crackdown in 2021. The umpires’ regular checks of pitchers have now more or less faded into the background. The broadcast cameras no longer make a point of showing each one, and if you didn’t know better, you might not realize the practice was still happening at all.
But if you did forget? Well, you probably remember now. There have been two episodes in the last week that have brought sticky stuff enforcement back into the limelight. And they’ve highlighted a need for clarity here.
The first incident came last Saturday with Yankees starter Domingo Germán facing the Twins. During a substance check in the third inning, Germán was instructed to wash excess rosin from his hand, but in the fourth, umpires determined his hand was sticky enough still to raise concern. But they did not move to eject him. Instead, Twins manager Rocco Baldelli came out to argue the point and was promptly ejected himself. (Baldelli later explained that he was not trying to suggest Germán was using any substance other than rosin, but rather that if he had been warned about the excess rosin once, the pitcher should have been ejected after the issue was raised a second time.) This might not have stood out very much—if it hadn’t been followed by a second incident that brought even more attention.
