MLB warns of 10-game bans for altering balls

Crackdown on use of foreign substances comes as league batting average hits 50-year low

NEW YORK — Pitchers will be ejected and suspended for 10 games for using illegal foreign substances to doctor baseballs in a crackdown by Major League Baseball that will start Monday.

The commissioner’s office, responding to record strikeouts and a league batting average at a more than half-century low, said Tuesday that major and minor league umpires will start regular checks of all pitchers, even if opposing managers don’t request inspections.

While suspensions would be with pay, repeat offenders would receive progressive discipline, and teams and club employees would be subject to discipline for failure to comply.

“After an extensive process of repeated warnings without effect, gathering information from current and former players and others across the sport, two months of comprehensive data collection, listening to our fans and thoughtful deliberation, I have determined that new enforcement of foreign substances is needed to level the playing field,” baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred said in a statement.

The perception of an increased use of foreign substances, tied to a drop in offense, is viewed as the largest instance of widespread cheating in baseball since the rise of steroids, which ended in the adoption of random drug testing with penalties ahead of the 2004 season.

Executive Vice President for Operations Morgan Sword, MLB Senior Vice President for On-field

Operations Mike Hill and consultant Theo Epstein outlined the increased enforcement during a 15-minute electronic meeting Tuesday with the 30 managers.

Hill sent a five-page memo with three pages of attached questions and answers to owners, CEOs, team presidents, general managers, managers and all major and minor league players.

“Unfortunately, the enhanced monitoring we implemented at the start of the season has had no impact on the behavior of many pitchers. The information we collected over the first two months of the season shows that the use of foreign substances by pitchers is more prevalent than we anticipated,” Hill wrote in the memo, a copy of which was obtained by the Associated Press. “We have taken these steps to police the use of foreign substances by pitchers this season because such brazen violations of the rules directly impact the fairness of the competition, the safety of our players, and the quality of the product on the field.”

Tampa Bay pitcher Tyler Glasnow, diagnosed Tuesday with a partially torn elbow ligament, attributed his injury to adapting ahead of stepped up enforcement.

“To tell us to do something completely different in a middle of a season is insane. It’s ridiculous. There has to be some give and take here,” he said.

“You can’t just take away everything and not add something. Pitchers need to be able to have some sort of control or some sort of grip on the ball . ... I don’t want a fastball to sail away and hit somebody in the face like it already has,” he said.

Manfred said use of grip substances had changed.

“I understand there’s a history of foreign substances being used on the ball, but what we are seeing today is objectively far different, with much tackier substances being used more frequently than ever before,” he said.

The last pitchers suspended for using foreign substances were Baltimore’s Brian Matusz and Milwaukee’s Will Smith for eight games each in May 2015. Both appealed, and Smith’s penalty was cut to six games while Matusz’s ban was upheld.

“I don’t think it changes much from what’s been in the past there as far as the rulebook, but there’s just been a little bit more noise about it,” New York Mets manager Luis Rojas said.

Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, singled out by Minnesota’s Josh Donaldson for a drop in spin rate in a June 3 start, dodged a question last week about whether he had ever used a Spider Tack, a sticky substance designed for use by Strongman competitors.

“I don’t quite know how to answer that, to be honest,” Cole said. “There are customs and practices that have been passed down from older players to younger players, from the last generation of players to this generation of players, and I think there are some things that are certainly out of bounds in that regard.”

Glasnow said he had been using sunscreen and rosin but changed for his June 8 start against Washington. He switched grips on his fastball and curveball to compensate for slickness of the balls, and he held on more tightly and more deeply.

“I went cold turkey, nothing,” he said. “I woke up the next day and was like, ‘I am sore in places that I didn’t even know I had muscles in.’ Like I felt completely different.”

He concluded: “I 100 percent believe that contributed to me getting hurt. No doubt.”

MLB told teams on March 23 it would increase monitoring and initiated steps that included collecting balls taken out of play from every team and analyzing Statcast spin-rate data.

“Based on the information collected over the first two months of the season — including numerous complaints from position players, pitchers, umpires, coaches and executives — there is a prevalence of foreign substance use by pitchers in Major League Baseball and throughout the minor leagues,” MLB said.