BOSTON — Listen to the Red Sox talk and you get the feeling Jon Lester could break a heavy sweat sitting in a freezer.
In the wake of a Cardinals minor league pitcher accusing Lester of having an illegal green substance in his glove during Game 1 of the World Series, Red Sox manager John Farrell and Lester were asked about the issue before Thursday night’s Game 2.
They said Lester used rosin to combat overactive sweat glands.
“I know that not once have I cheated,” Lester told reporters. “The picture does look bad. But it’s rosin. And my next start, in Game 5, I’ll go out there and do the exact same thing.
“I sweat like you wouldn’t believe. I need to keep water off of my hands and try to keep holding the ball. I think hitters would like that. It’s perfectly legal. They put it back there [behind the mound] for a reason. I’ll continue to do it.”
Farrell stayed with the sweat angle.
“From my perspective, if you know Jon Lester, he sweats like a pig and he needs rosin and he keeps it in his glove,’’ Farrell said of his ace who pitched 7²/₃ scoreless innings in an 8-1 win over the Cardinals in 50-degree weather at Fenway Park.
Rosin sits inside a bag that is a fixture behind the pitcher’s mound in every big league game. Liquids or gels, on the other hand, are illegal.
“Obviously, Major League Baseball has reviewed the pictures,’’ Farrell said. “They have issued their statement and basically determined this to be a closed case.’’
Earlier, MLB had released a statement after watching a video posted by Tyler Melling, a Cardinals minor league pitcher, during Game 1 that was later deleted.
“We cannot draw any conclusions from this video. There were no complaints from the Cardinals and the umpires never detected anything indicating a foreign substance throughout the game,’’ the statement read.
There is very little doubt Farrell, a former Red Sox pitching coach, knows a lot of tricks used by pitchers. But one answer he couldn’t provide, was why what he said was rosin, which is a grey powder, was green in the video.
“The one thing that seemed very odd is that it shows up in a lime green color,’’ Farrell said. “I don’t know how that can happen.’’
Asked if he could categorically say rosin was the only substance in Lester’s glove, Farrell said he could.
“Yes. Having been Jon Lester’s pitching coach, you know what, he’s got rosin he uses and he happens to put it inside his glove,’’ Farrell said. “Categorically, yeah, that’s what he used.’’
Cardinals manager Mike Matheny, a former big league catcher who has to recognize a doctored pitch when he sees one, made sure to tell the world the accusations didn’t come from his team even though it was a player in the St. Louis farm system making them.
“This was not instigated by us. The way that we approach this is we just play the game,’’ Matheny said. “We don’t deny that some things have been acknowledged. If that’s what he claims, that’s what it is. Right now it’s pretty much a dead issue.
“We move on with the fact that [MLB] now has to take notice.’’
Matheny didn’t want to keep the issue alive because he believed that would be whining.
“You realize the ramifications of that. If we started going down that path it would just be trying to make excuses for a pitcher having a very good game against us,’’ Matheny said. “And that’s not the kind of team we are. We see what happens, we make note of it and we just keep playing.’’