This summer, Major League Baseball was rocked by a cheating scandal that many
say was years in the making.
>> Major League Baseball says too many pitchers today are doctoring the ball.
>> Everybody in this sport has known for
decades that there has been a use of foreign substances.
>> This is baseball's dirty little secret.
>> The rule's always been in place.
The rule's been in place since 1934:
you can't apply foreign substances on the baseball.
>> Now, a new generation of scientifically optimized substances has brought
the sport to a crisis point.
So, why does this sticky stuff actually make pitches harder to hit and
what does it mean for the future of baseball?
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Since the early days of baseball, it's been an open secret that many pitchers
were adding substances to the ball to try to gain a competitive advantage.
>> The OG substance was pine tar,
which is used all over the game mostly for holding the bat.
>> This is Andy Andres, he's an expert on the physics and physiology of baseball.
>> First, it was pine tar. That's actually a substance which is very visible.
So they switched over in recent years to sunscreen and rosin.
Players would layer up the sunscreen and rosin on their forearm and
then all of a sudden their fingers are really sticky.
Now they're getting chemical engineers involved so
that they can get the right substance with the right kind of tackiness.
People experimented and they actually found what worked.
>> One of the new substances that's been making headlines is Spider Tack,
which was invented to help athletes in strength competitions lift Atlas stones.
>> They're using things that can literally hold bricks to your hand.
This might seem counterintuitive to some people.
Why would I want to make the ball stick to my finger if I'm trying to throw it?
Not surprisingly, the answer lies in physics.
>> It's really about friction, right?
A good analogy is trying to spin open a jar.
Okay, when we have a stuck jar lid, if you had wet, slick fingers,
you really couldn't spin it open with your fingers.
But imagine if your fingers were covered in a sticky substance,
you could actually get more friction on that lid and potentially open it.
>> With more friction comes more spin,
or revolutions per minute of the ball through the air.
But why are pitchers looking for more spin?
What effect does the spin rate have on the action of the ball?
To answer that question, we have to look at the different forces that act on
a baseball that's spinning through the air. >> Okay, so
this is probably the best way to do it.
If I'm pitching to the batter over here and I'm spinning the baseball, right?
It's spinning in this direction.
>> As the ball moves through the air,
it's going to displace the air molecules around it.
The spinning motion causes the air molecules on the top and
the bottom of the ball to be displaced at different rates.
You can imagine the air molecules on the top of the ball zipping across quickly as
they move in the same direction the ball is spinning.
While the molecules on the bottom of the ball move more slowly because they're
moving against the direction of the spin.
This causes a difference in air pressure between the top and
the bottom of the ball.
Now, because an object moving through air will move more easily from an area
of high pressure to an area of low pressure, this means a spinning
fastball will actually move slightly up as it travels toward the batter.
>> Now we're not talking having a fastball go to the moon, or anything,
or lift off like an airfoil, but it's enough there to cause a break,
to cause the pitch to spin upward, to rise a bit.
But imagine if you could move it upward a little more, just an inch or
two higher, they're gonna swing right under it.
>> The same goes for the curveball, slider,
any ball that uses spin to create movement in space.
That movement, or break, will be accentuated by the increased spin
the pitcher is getting by using the sticky substance on the ball,
making the pitch that much harder to hit.
>> A lot of people point to what they call a hitting crisis
in baseball. Nearly a quarter of all batters have struck out.
Batting averages are down, strikeouts are up, and suspicions are high.
>> In 2015, a system called Statcast started gathering data on every aspect
of every pitch, from arm strength, to launch angle, to, of course, spin rate.
Starting in 2019,
people noticed that spin rate was increasing dramatically across the league.
Suddenly, the game of baseball was being dominated by pitchers.
>> Everyone was happy with the way it was until the competitive advantage
swung towards the pitchers too much.
>> There was enough of an outcry that in May of 2021,
Major League Baseball announced new enforcement rules, stating that pitchers
would be checked for foreign substances during the game.
>> Well, today is the official start of Major League Baseball's crackdown
on the sticky stuff.
And the sticky stuff police was out in full force today. Their first suspect?
Jacob deGrom.
>> Jacob deGrom was the first one stopped leaving the field by the umpires and
they inspected his hat, they inspected his glove, they inspected his belt buckle.
They found nothing, as far as I know,
and he kept pitching >> Since the new enforcement rules
were put in place, spin rates have been observed to drop just as
dramatically as they had risen back in 2019.
>> It's definitely become a pitchers' game and what they're trying to do is tilt back
towards the batters a bit, trying to balance this out.
As technology evolves, the 118 year old Major League Baseball
seems to be doing their best to evolve with it.
As to these new rules for pitchers, time will tell whether they... stick or not.
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