For Kansas City Royals, foreign substance crackdown is about safety, injury concerns

Kansas City Royals right-handed reliever Scott Barlow takes the ball just about as often as any pitcher in Major League Baseball.

He has pitched in 31 of the team’s first 67 games this year. Last year, he led the majors with 32 appearances in a 60-game season (he also led the majors with 25 scoreless appearances).

The idea of a 10-game suspension for using foreign substances, regardless of the fact he’d still receive a paycheck, resonated as a credible deterrent with Barlow as he got wide-eyed discussing the potential ramifications in an interview with The Star earlier this week.

“Losing a guy and not being able to replace him, that’s going to put a lot of load on a bullpen if you do go down a guy,” Barlow said. “You’re probably going to have to back-to-back when you’re not supposed to or pitch on days you’re not supposed to pitch because 10 days is a long time.”

“That’s going to be the biggest cause for guys not to use it because that’s going to put a lot of stress on the team and people’s arms. I’d hate to see someone go down for those 10 days and it affect someone’s career, potentially, if you’re having to pitch more than you’re supposed to. I think that’s an eye-opening factor of this whole thing.”

The “thing” Barlow referenced is the forthcoming crackdown by MLB on the use of foreign substances by pitchers to manipulate baseballs.

In a memo sent out on Tuesday, MLB informed clubs that umpires will be conducting repeated checks throughout each game for foreign substances beginning on June 21.

The prohibition on foreign substances has been part of baseball’s official rules for decades, so this week’s memo from the commissioner’s office was not instituting a new rule. Rather MLB described it as “guidance” to curtail the use of illegal forms of goop, gunk, adhesives, glues, Spider Tack, and all forms of sticky stuff.

The only acceptable substance will be the rosin bag provided on each mound.

Players caught with or applying foreign substances will face ejection and suspension. If another player on the field, such as a catcher, applies the foreign substance and the pitcher takes advantage of that, then both the position player and pitcher will be ejected and suspended.

Any player who refuses to cooperate with an inspection by the umpire will also receive an ejection and a suspension. Club personnel who aid players in their use of foreign substances, cover it up, or fail to report violations will face fines and/or suspension.

If a player is suspended for an on-field violation, his team will not be allowed to replace him on the roster.

Barlow said gripping the baseball is a legitimate concern for pitchers. Having spent some time in Japan, the ball there is tackier, and that’s something Barlow hopes MLB will look at as they try to fix the problem.

“Personally, I don’t use anything,” Barlow said. “I’ll just use the rosin bag on the back of the mound. But for some guys — you see it on TV — I think it’s going to be an adjustment for some guys especially when it’s hot too. Sweat will kind of affect you.

“With the guidance thing, you have to be more careful. They’re going to be checking, they’re going to be making sure they’re kind of cracking down on it. There’s definitely going to be an adjustment for some dudes. It’s going to be interesting to see what comes of it for sure, especially when they first start to implement it. ”

An abrupt change

In March, MLB informed clubs and players that it would be taking a close look and collecting data on the prevalence of foreign substances.

However this mid-season shift has raised concerns.

Tampa Bay Rays star pitcher Tyler Glasnow, an early-season candidate for American League Cy Young, made pointed and critical comments about MLB’s enhanced enforcement of the foreign substance rule in the aftermath of his partial UCL tear and flexor strain.

He asserted that making the mid-season switch to not having any sort of gripping agent caused his injury.

Glasnow, who had used sunscreen and rosin to grip the baseball, went without any substance recently in anticipation of the MLB crackdown. As a result, he said he had to alter his grip on multiple types of pitches and he felt a difference in the wake of his starts.

Royals manager Mike Matheny, who spent 13 seasons in the majors, said he and his staff did not promote the use of any substance whether high-grade adhesive or a sunscreen and rosin mix, but they took a “hands off” approach to how pitchers assured they had a grip on the baseball.

This new “guidance” and the potential penalties from MLB will certainly raise the level of involvement of the coaching staff.

Matheny planned to address the topic with the pitching staff this week and stress the importance of not putting the team in a position to have to play short-handed and the impact that could have on the club.

“It’s a big deal to us as a club,” Matheny said. “We can’t be short one pitcher for 10 days, so that conversation is much different.”

Matheny also expressed surprise that MLB went “from zero to 100” with its stance on substances.

Matheny assumed MLB wouldn’t make this change until a compromise had been reached on an acceptable substance, a tackier ball or an improved rosin bag for those pitchers who feel they need something to grip the baseball.

“Give us that thing before we start going cold turkey on this deal,” Matheny said. “It’s going to be a mess, I think. Depending on how aggressive the umpires are going to be, potentially we’re talking about risking more injury.

“If teams start getting players suspended and you’re light in the bullpen, how can you cover the innings? Are you going overwork guys? Who knows how all this going play out? It’s pretty radical.”

Addressing hitter’s concerns

Royals leadoff hitter Whit Merrifield led MLB in hits in 2018 and 2019 — the first right-handed hitter since Kirby Puckett to do so in back-to-back seasons — and earned MLB All-Star honors in the last full-length season, 2019.

As of last week, Merrifield was on pace for 99 RBIs and 47 stolen bases this season, a combination last achieved by Hall of Famer Barry Bonds (114 RBI and 52 stolen bases) in 1990.

“The biggest issue that I have with it is we’ve got to find a way to get guys more in the zone, the control back,” Merrifield told The Star. “We’re seeing way, way, way too many hit by pitches up and in. In the LA trip we had three guys get hit in the head within a week. We’ve seen stuff like happened with (Kevin) Pillar, stuff like what happened with (Bryce) Harper. Chad Pinder got hit (Monday) night in the back of the head. It’s happening way too often.”

Pillar and Harper were both left on the ground in the batter’s box after having been hit in the face with pitches thrown more than 90 mph.

“I don’t know if that’s a result of guys trying to throw as hard as they can and have as nasty a stuff as they can, but it’s getting dangerous,” Merrifield said. “It’s getting almost out of hand. There’s gotta be some sort of way to dial that back a little bit. I think maybe this is MLB’s way of trying. I don’t know if it’s the solution, but I think it’s part of them trying to reduce the hit by pitches.”

In it’s announcement of the “enhanced enforcement,” MLB cited complaints from position players, pitchers, umpires, coaches and executives about foreign substance usage as well as testing and third-party researchers that concluded that foreign substances significantly increase the spin rate and movement of the baseball and provided pitchers an unfair competitive advantage over hitters.

MLB also made the correlation between foreign substance use and an approach to pitching reliant on spin and velocity at the expense of location. The league pointed out that the hit-by-pitch ratio this season had been the highest of any season in the past 100 years.

“I don’t know how much plays into the substance part, but I think teams are rewarding guys, and the media in that aspect (is too),” Merrifield said. “There’s a whole Twitter account based solely on nasty pitches, the Pitching Ninja or whatever.

“All he wants to show is nasty pitches, so guys are just trying to rip sliders as hard as they can, throw fastballs as hard as they can and hope that their stuff is elite enough to where they can get away with mistakes and not worry so much about commanding balls. That’s a dangerous place to be as a hitter.”

Raised eyebrows and finger pointing

With these changes set to take place next week, it almost assures an increased scrutiny on pitching statistics and how pitchers perform.

Will that lead to widespread finger pointing and the assumption that any pitcher who struggles was a product of the goop?

“You’re going to have different environments in which you’re pitching in and I’m sure your numbers are going to be different,” Barlow said. “Some days you feel good and some days you don’t. You’ve got one pitch that’s working one day and it’s not working another day, so I think overall you could maybe look at it as a yearly average. But going from game-to-game, guys sometimes are hanging a little bit or just not feeling 100 percent. So I don’t think it would be fair to look at it necessarily game-to-game.”

Barlow has experienced the difference between pitching in the heat and humidity of Kansas City during the summer, the San Francisco Bay Area with winds blowing, and the altitude of Colorado where pitches move differently and the ball carries farther.

Of course, some critics won’t look for nuance. That’s a cold truth that Merrifield acknowledged.

“I think that’s sort of human nature, I guess, if a pitcher struggles now everyone is going to say that’s because he’s not using the tacky stuff anymore,” Merrifield said. “I don’t know how much truth there is to that. I was never one to dive into why is this guy nasty now and not nasty then. I just thought maybe he developed and got better. I don’t know.

“There’s going to be a lot of pressure on some of these guys that have had success to continue to have success with this coming out. Because whether it’s justified or not, if they struggle people are going to assume that they were using sticky stuff.”

Detroit Tigers pitcher Casey Mize was infuriated over having to switch gloves during his start against the Royals this week on the day MLB announced it’s crackdown.

Umpires made him change due to his glove color, but he angrily claimed in his postgame comments that people would assume he was using sticky substances.

“Eyebrows raise over anything,” Matheny said. “I don’t think we can be too slowed down by eyebrows. I remember I had one good start one year and actually showed a little bit of power and I was afraid people were going to think I was taking steroids because we were in the Steroid Era. I had hit like two homers and I normally hit none.

“The guys that don’t have anything to worry about, don’t worry about it. The guys that do, they better worry.”