The Los Angeles Dodgers manager, Dave Roberts, Expressed concern that one of its star pitchers, Trevor Bauer, has been singled out in the renewed Major League effort to reduce the illegal use of foreign substances on baseballs.
Bauer’s name appeared in a recent report on The Athletic portal, which said several baseballs were collected for inspection after he was found to have visible marks and felt sticky. Bauer complained about the report through his Twitter account and has criticized MLB for leaking information about “a supposedly confidential process.”
“I understand that the referees collect baseballs from all the pitchers, and balls that were in play, to collect samples,” Roberts said Friday morning before his team’s first home game. “That’s a bit of what I get. I just hope our player isn’t singled out. That’s the only thing I want to protect myself from,” he added.
MLB, which has spent the past year trying to control launchers using foreign substances in an effort to maximize spin speeds and generate more changes and failures, issued a memorandum to teams on March 23 describing three new methods. .
It included having two employees and a game day compliance monitor parked at each baseball stadium in part responsible for identifying violations of foreign substances. The league also said it would review Statcast data to identify alarming increases in spin speed and instruct staff on the field, including referees “to send out-of-game baseballs to the Office of the Commissioner for further inspection and documentation “.
“They will give priority to those that contain potential evidence of a foreign substance,” the memorandum said, “but they will also select balls at random to ensure full coverage.”
Some of these will be outsourced to a lab for further inspection, but sources told ESPN that the league will spend the 2021 season primarily in information gathering mode. Bauer is not currently facing a possible penalty from the league. But the findings being inspected could be used as supporting evidence for punishment in the future.
Bauer publicly criticized the league’s original memorandum, posting a 23-minute video on YouTube in which he questioned MLB’s intent.