(06-10-2021 06:06 PM)Brookes Owl Wrote:  

(06-09-2021 07:22 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(06-09-2021 05:38 PM)Brookes Owl Wrote:  

(06-09-2021 04:38 PM)Wedge Wrote:  

(06-09-2021 12:28 PM)Brookes Owl Wrote:  I'm gonna sound like a Bauer apologist here - and I'm REALLY sorry for that - but his non-answer is pretty understandable. Sticky stuff has been used league-wide for a long time, the league has never consistently enforced the rules, and it's not clear yet what they're going to do. If he admits it here, he's busted and who knows what happens. If he says no but he HAS used it (and evidence comes in later) he's MORE busted. If he says no because he used some other product then he's just parsing and looks like an a-hole. This response certainly doesn't make him look good but I'm not sure what response would have looked/sounded better.

That's Gerrit Cole above with the evasive non-answer, not Bauer.

Not sure if you're being sarcastic/satirical, or if you really think I missed something but just in case: I know who it is, and I typed Bauer because he's a known foreign substance user and sticking up for Cole sounds an awful lot like sticking up for Bauer, particularly as a Dodgers fan.

Quote:Sure, he has no good answer there, but consider that we could replace "Sticky stuff" with "Steroids" in your comment and then we'd be talking about Mark McGwire in 1998.

I get the analogy but there are important differences, in particular that MLB has treated pine tar/stickum/spider tack/etc enforcement with a wink. MLB has allowed pitchers to use sticky substances with impunity as long as they are discreet about it - for years.

MLB had the same approach to steroids in 1998 when McGwire was BSing about it. MLB didn't begin testing players until 2003 and didn't start disciplining players for positive tests until the 2004 season.

Pine tar or variations have been around for much longer than steroids. While a foreign substance, for a long time it was even considered a safety measure - one of the reasons it wasn't given as much scrutiny. But we went from safety to spin rate and there's just no way to say "x" is too much but "y" is ok. The idea that MLB is using spin rates to determine which pitchers are abusing is nuts. Akin to saying players who hit too many HRs were juicing. They may have been but that's ****** evidence.

Things like pine tar have been around forever, but apparently Spider Tack and similar concoctions are more effective in generating spin and other ball movement on pitches.

Amphetamines were widely used, and openly used, in baseball in the 1950s and 1960s, long before steroids and other "modern" PEDs, but the newer PEDs are much more effective. And 'roids have been in MLB since at least the early 1980s, when there started to be "performance anomalies" that look pretty suspicious in retrospect, knowing what we know now about PEDs.