BOSTON — The wording in the MLB press release was that Michael Pineda was suspended 10 games “for possessing a foreign substance on his person” while pitching Wednesday against the Red Sox.
That is only because MLB is a large corporation that believes in being diplomatic or else it would have read something like this:
Michael Pineda was suspended 10 games for stupidity, or for being a bad cheat or for lacking savvy.
He was suspended not for breaking a rule, but breaking it poorly. Which means it is time to change the rule. If everyone in the game is fine with the pitchers having a tacky substance on a cool night, then legalize the use of a tacky substance on a cool night.
The sport already condones the use of a foreign substance on the ball — rosin. In warmer weather, rosin plus water from sweat or a licked finger will improve grip. But in cooler weather — when the baseballs get harder and slicker — rosin is more powdery, less sticky.
So pitchers use a stickier substance such as pine tar (Pineda’s choice) or a thick sunscreen such as BullFrog or sticky sprays that are easily purchased on the Internet. Hitters not only don’t care, they almost universally want the pitcher using a substance that will improve control, hoping to avoid an uncontrolled slick baseball zooming at 90 mph toward their heads.
Yes, pitchers would not use such substances if they did not think they helped. But it is generally accepted within the game that such sticky items — if not over-lathered on the ball — merely allow a pitcher to throw his breaking ball with full grip, not an improved breaking ball. At least not a significant improvement. This is not like adding, say, Vaseline or scuffing a ball to create beyond usual movement, which hitters are adamantly against.
The sense, in fact, is there are a lot fewer scuffed baseballs thrown now simply because of the epidemic of balls thrown out of play during a game. An average ball now lasts only several pitches. The intrusive, up-close nature of the cameras makes it harder to hide items that scuff the ball on the mound and puts players at greater risk of trying to disguise Vaseline or soap on their being.
Here is what I think should be done: The Players Association should poll pitchers on what substances they use in cold weather. A list of the most popular two or three then should be approved by hitters. If all the players bless it, then MLB should sanctify those two to three sticky items and allow them to be put in something like a rosin bag that the umpires control and put on the back of the mound.
When the weather falls below a certain level — say, 50 degrees with the wind chill — pitchers should be allowed to apply it to their fingertips only. Since this usage would now be legalized, a suspension of 25 games should become automatic for being caught with any other substance on the mound as a deterrent to trying to take this molehill improvement and turn it into a mountain of cheating.
At least this way, we could remove some of the hypocrisy in a rule that now is about degrees of cheating, and if the pitcher is discreet enough. Let’s assure MLB does not have to delicately word a press release on the subject any longer.
Spanish-speaking players need help
Give Pineda credit, he asks to do all of his media in English, even those sessions that have involved his baseball crisis with pine tar.
But the fact that each team does not have at least one designated translator for players whose first language is Spanish is wrong.
The Yankees, for example, pay salary, travel and per diem for individual translators for their three Japanese players — Hiroki Kuroda, Ichiro Suzuki and Masahiro Tanaka. I don’t begrudge that. I understand it is to gain greater comfort and avoid embarrassment.
But Kuroda is 39, Ichiro 40; both have played here a long time now, Kuroda in major cities Los Angeles and New York. They have sophistication about them, yet they have the translators. Pineda is 25. He played one year in Seattle. He reeks of naiveté.
Joe Girardi said in private meetings with Pineda about the pine tar that “there’s nothing lost in translation,” that the front office and staff are “very thorough,” which means a Spanish speaker was probably there to assist. Pineda was offered a translator to speak to the media about both of his pine-tar incidents, but declined. Again, good for him.
But each time, you could tell he was struggling with words and nuances of both questions and answers on a sensitive subject. I am twice Pineda’s age and would not attempt to be understood on a sensitive subject in downtown Santo Domingo, and I don’t think any player should be asked to do the same in his second language here, where the wrong word or emphasis could hurt his career and, by the way, also hurt the franchise.
On Opening Day rosters this year, 22.6 percent of the players came from Spanish-speaking nations such as the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, etc. That is large enough in a $9 billion-a-year industry that each team should hire a capable Spanish-to-English translator to help these players navigate a second language, especially in times of crisis.