Pitchers have always bent the rules to make their pitches harder to hit. But this season, with batters struggling, the authorities are starting to crack down
It’s a good time to be a pitcher in Major League Baseball: they are enjoying their most dominant season since 1968, which baseball historians refer to as “The Year of the Pitcher”. And it’s all the more welcome for the pitchers as they’ve spent the last few years being brutalized by the game’s sluggers. It may not last though. Last week MLB announced it will crack down on pitchers using “foreign substances”, forcing a reckoning with one of the league’s primary “don’t-ask-don’t-tell” rules.
Gerrit Cole on if he ever used Spider Tack while pitching:
“I don’t quite know how to answer that, to be honest…If MLB wants to legislate some more stuff, that’s a conversation that we can have” pic.twitter.com/2fR1AUeOQX
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