I was curious, going into last night, if the public spat about Trevor Bauer’s alleged (by many, not explicitly by Major League Baseball) use of pine tar or a similar substance would get Bauer to back down (in the event he’s using a foreign substance to elevate his spin rate—something that has not been proven).
It doesn’t look like it did.
Here, for context, are Bauer’s spin rates, season-by-season. Pay attention to the y-axis here, because it’s going to shrink in the next graph (both graphs are from Baseball Savant).
Now, here are the spin rates this season, start-to-start.
His cutter’s spin rate did drop, but not by a huge amount when comparing it against the y-axis. Beyond that, everything was pretty in line, and his 4-seam fastball rose.
For whatever it’s worth.
