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Sarris: Across MLB, spin rates are back up near their peak. Is the sticky stuff here to stay?

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Is the battle against spin hopeless? Spin rates around baseball are climbing back up — almost back to where they were before baseball started to more actively enforce the foreign substance rules mid-season last year — and it’s probably due to some sort of evolution in the sticky solutions used by pitchers to augment their stuff.

And the reality is that’s only one of the ways pitchers have the edge over their counterparts at the plate right now, some of whom are increasingly frustrated about the situation.

“Pitchers have the ultimate advantage right now, with sticky stuff, the dead ball, and humidors,” lamented one major league hitter recently.

Last June, MLB made the seemingly unprecedented decision to ramp up enforcement of a pre-existing rule about using foreign substances to doctor the ball. There was immediately a precipitous drop in spin rates, but a mere two months later, we started to see players adjust to the enforcement method — consisting mostly of a check of the hat and belt — and regain some of their old spin rates. About a fifth of the players that saw a huge drop mid-season got their spin back late last year.

So baseball upped the enforcement this season and started touching pitchers’ hands. Which of course led to some tension, at least with certain pitchers.

The thinking is clear: the stickiest stuff leads to the biggest increases in spin rate (which in turn leads to the most dramatic increases in stuff) and so a check of the hand should keep anyone from using a substance that they can’t get off their hands quickly. If you’ve touched pine tar or Spider Tack — which was developed to help strongmen grip Atlas Stones during The World’s Strongest Man competitions — you know you can’t get it off easily. So, check the hands, stop the crazy-level cheating. That makes sense.

But it looks like pitchers have found something clear and wipeable that gives them more of a boost than sunscreen and rosin, because spin rate is back up in baseball. Almost back to where it was before enforcement started.

The highest and lowest points in league-average spin rate in the spin-rate tracking era are both on this graph, so it’s not a trick of the y-axis: spin took a huge drop after enforcement, and then it started to creep back to past levels almost immediately. Adjusting for velocity, because velocity and spin are interrelated, creates the same graph. This is a real effect.

“It’s really obvious,” said a hitting coach who then rattled off examples of pitchers who had come to town recently and used some sort of substance.

Pocket pitchers aren’t back to the extreme days of Spider Tack. You have to go through 51 pitcher seasons before you get to this year’s highest four-seam spin rate, and then another 123 pitcher seasons before you get to this year’s second-highest spin rate. The very top spin rates have been eliminated, but pitchers seem to be finding something that’s almost as good.

A league source confirmed this is something they are monitoring closely, but there is an obvious question they have to debate as they consider the way forward. What more can they do? Consider this breakdown of perhaps the most detailed frisking of a pitcher in modern memory: James Karinchak has been accused of using something in his hair to gain spin, and his spin rates are up (almost back to pre-enforcement levels). The umpire literally touches his hair upon request of the opposing manager.

“Of course it is,” said another major league hitter when presented with the evidence that spin is back up. “The umpire checks are almost useless.”

But that umpire check seems pretty thorough. If that’s useless, what more could umpires do? This is basically the same sort of frisking that MMA fighters get before a fight, which is fairly intimate and thorough. And yet it doesn’t seem to be working.

“I think they need to hire MLB officials that sit in the dugout or bullpen and do serious checks,” suggested a hitter.

Others thought more eyes on the field could help.

“If anyone really cared about this, they could put an umpire behind the mound that could step in and do spot checks at any moment,” said a hitting coach, pointing out there are pitchers with solutions on their pants that help dissolve sticky stuff before the hand inspections.

The union wouldn’t comment on any negotiations concerning sticky stuff enforcement, nor would the league comment on any additional moves they might make to remedy the situation. Each potential additional solution has drawbacks, too.

There are already MLB officials that move around the clubhouse in order to monitor things like the storage and rubbing of the baseballs, and also officials that do random dugout sweeps for sign-stealing technology, but if they’re checking pitchers who have already stepped off the mound, they’re not likely to find much. That seems too similar to what umpires are already doing.

An umpire right behind the mound that could step in and check a pitcher between acquiring their sticky stuff and throwing the ball might actually stop the practice cold, but would also be completely new to the sport. Baseball went to a four-umpire system for all regular season games in 1952, at least, so it’s been a while.

But before either side agrees to something more radical, there’s another question that has to be considered. Who exactly cares enough to push that kind of change?

Selective enforcement of the rules is not ideal in any context, but in a sport with unwritten rules, there have always been slight differences between what’s in the rule book and what happens on the field. Baseball made a push to eliminate steroids from the game, but steroids produced players that looked different and broke hallowed numbers. Is sticky stuff really in the same category?

The sport is trying to change the play on the field and increase balls in play at the cost of reducing strikeouts, so reducing spin would help that effort. There’s a link between spin rate and results, but we’re talking about a strikeout percentage point or two when we talk about removing sticky stuff from the game, and that’s been borne out by play on the field. This isn’t a very effective way to reduce strikeout rates throughout the game.

Then there’s just raw interest in the whole thing. Although this story did break through and capture the national interest for a short time, it seems to have receded from the spotlight recently, as this graph from Google Trends shows.

There is, of course, a group that still cares a lot: Major league hitters (and their hitting coaches) care, especially when it comes to the link between spin rate and stuff and the more complicated history of the rise of hit-by- pitches within the game, and they aren’t necessarily largely happy to let things lie as they are.

But in the face of limited benefit to the game, perhaps limited interest from the fans, and difficult precedent-changing enforcement decisions, the road forward for baseball isn’t clear. Maybe capping spin rates below the extremes we saw when Spider Tack reigned will be good enough for the sport — if not for its hitters.

(Top photo of umpires checking Karinchak: Scott Galvin / USA Today)

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