Tempers flare, pants drop during crackdown on cheating pitchers

The defining moments of the MLB season so far came Tuesday, when Max Scherzer glared at Joe Girardi and Sergio Romo dropped his pants.

MLB action, it's fantastic?

Not really, but that's the mess baseball created first by letting pitchers cheat with increasing frequency and with more and more exotic substances, and then ushering in a sweeping crackdown on such things in the middle of this season.

Scherzer, one of this generation's best pitchers, was checked three times for illegal substances in his start Tuesday for the Nationals. After the third time, he glared into the Phillies dugout at manager Joe Girardi, who came charging out and was ejected.

I talked about the drama on Wednesday's Daily Delivery podcast, noting that maybe for one day it's exciting but over the course of a season will only serve to do damage to a sport already filled with delays and distrust.

At issue for Girardi was how Scherzer kept taking off his cap.

"I've seen Max a long time, since 2010," Girardi said after the game. "Obviously, he's going to be a Hall of Famer. I've never seen him wipe his head like he was doing tonight, ever. It was suspicious for me. He did it four or five times. It was suspicious. I didn't mean to offend anyone. I just got to do what's right for my club."

Scherzer maintained that he was just using sweat to get a grip on the ball after hitting a batter. That's all umpires found on him as well, but that didn't stop the hard feelings.

"These are (Rob) Manfred rules," Scherzer groused after the game, referring to the sport's embattled commissioner. "Go ask him. I've said enough."

The thing is, pitchers keep saying all they want to do is grip the ball better. But Scherzer's fastball spin rate — the revolutions per minute on his pitches, which can influence both velocity and movement — was down about 5% Tuesday from his average 2021 start. You can find similar numbers for a lot of different pitchers lately and draw conclusions about what was happening before the crackdown.

Big deal, you might say. What's 5%? Well, you might also find it interesting that in the last 14 days, MLB hitters are striking out about 3% less than they did earlier in the season. And that in the same span hitters have a .243 batting average — five points higher than the overall .238 mark in 2021.

MLB's quick correction can be both clumsy and necessary at the same time.

My guess is that the crackdown will ease up some as the year goes on and pitchers — scared enough of a potential suspension — will at least avoid the hard core stuff they were using to completely load up baseballs and dominate hitters.

Then maybe we'll have fewer confrontations and a more level playing field.

And Romo, the former Twins pitcher who dropped his pants for Oakland after umpires wanted to check him for illegal stuff on Tuesday, can keep his uniform all the way on.