Ron Coomer got going on the pine tar situation again last night, after both Clayton Kershaw and Trevor Bauer had a strange amount of pitch slippage. And while I hope this ends with Coom kidnapping Sam Holbrook so he can tie him up in the bowels of Wrigley Field, go out there and umpire himself, check a pitcher’s hand for something sticky, then rip his mask off with it-was-me-the-whole-time! flair, I’m not here to talk about that so much as I’m here to mention it and move on to a conspiracy theory.
Here’s the theory:
Major League Baseball isn’t collecting baseballs to crack down on foreign substance usage.
Major League Baseball is collecting baseballs to figure out how best to legalize foreign substance usage.
The league may well be incapable of policing this. If they figure out what guys are using, then, they can at least standardize it. That might be their line of thinking. And in classic Major League Baseball fashion, they don’t want to look like they were had, so instead of just asking guys what they’re using, they’re trying to reverse engineer the stick.
Just a theory. But tell me where I’m wrong.
