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.
That came Wednesday afternoon with Mets pitcher Max Scherzer facing the Dodgers. After the second inning, Scherzer was instructed to wash his hands because of a stickiness that he explained was due to rosin. After the third, he was asked to change his glove because it was sticky, too. Before the bottom of the fourth, however, he was checked once more. “I knew I was going to get checked in the fourth,” Scherzer told reporters after. “I would have to be an absolute idiot to try to do anything when I’m coming back out in the fourth.” But the umpires felt his hand remained suspiciously sticky, and despite his protests that it was just rosin, Scherzer was ejected.
Mets skipper Buck Showalter later confirmed the ejection was in fact for sticky stuff—rather than for arguing with the umpires—which means an automatic 10-game suspension is to come for Scherzer. (It can be appealed.)
Ashley Landis/AP
The pitcher continued to insist he was using only rosin.
“I swear on my kids’ lives, I’m not using anything else,” he told reporters after the game. “This is sweat and rosin.”
The umpires told a pool reporter that it felt like something else.
“I said this to Buck and to Max, it really didn't matter to us what it is,” said umpire Phil Cuzzi. “All we know is that it was far stickier than anything that we felt certainly today and anything this year.”
This is the third ejection for illegal substances since the crackdown began in 2021. Cuzzi has been on the umpiring crew for all three.
Still, he was not the only umpire on Wednesday to say that Scherzer’s hand felt unusually sticky.
“As far as stickiness, level of stickiness, this was the stickiest that it has been since I've been inspecting hands, which now goes back three seasons,” said umpire Dan Bellino, who was working home plate.
There were some clear similarities between Scherzer’s situation and Germán’s. Both pitchers insisted they were using only rosin, which is permitted, but with strict parameters. (A pitcher can apply rosin only to his hand, wrist and forearm, not to his glove or uniform or the ball itself, and he cannot mix rosin with other substances like sunscreen.) And both were checked by umpires repeatedly under a system that is new this year. Whereas past seasons had substance checks at regular, expected points, MLB sent teams a memo this spring explaining that checks can now be done at random at the discretion of the umpiring crew, so as to make it harder for pitchers to evade detection.
Yet the two incidents are distinct. A one-to-one comparison is impossible. But it’s not hard to see how fans could look at the last week and come away confused. Here were two pitchers who both swore they were using only rosin. The umpires believed one and permitted him to stay in the game. They felt there was reason to doubt the other and ejected him. That doesn’t automatically mean the rules were applied inconsistently. But it does suggest a lack of clarity in communication—for players and fans alike.
Scherzer’s agent, Scott Boras, released a statement about the incident shortly after the end of the game.
“MLB standards and rules enforcement should mandate and require an objective verifiable standard,” Boras wrote. “If you want to attack the integrity of the competition you need clear precise standards [or] else you damage the game and its players. The Cuzzi on field spectrometer is not the answer. MLB needs to employ available scientific methods (not subjective) to create verifiable certainty of its rules.”
Boras, of course, has a vested interest in protecting Scherzer. But the point holds. Maybe truly objective, scientific methods of inspection are impossible—or impossible without dramatically slowing down the game or muddying the waters by introducing other variables—but clarity and consistency are perfectly within the realm of possibility.
Or, at least, they should be.
