Baseball Gunk
Completing my week of comics not about football, Baseball gunk checks! Thanks for the idea in the last comic comments.
I can’t comment on the gunk checks with much depth since baseball isn’t something I follow these days but it’s been hard to miss the noise gunk checks are making. Are the gunk checks good? Are they a waste of time? I do know that it’s hilarious how mad pitchers are about it, and Max Scherzer starting to strip after getting frustrated with the checks was pretty great. A baseball head in the comments can clarify this for me but it feels like a vintage case of the sport recognizing a problem and then going about fixing it in the stupidest ways possible that make everyone annoyed. MLB’s own version of the Pass Interference Review rule.
As a baseball hater, fuck the pitchers. More hits are fun. Watching a pitcher get his ass kicked is hilarious. Watching a pitcher methodically throw ball after ball is boring and only gets fun once the count tightens up and the next pitch has to actually have an outcome. Or if the pitcher is on a roll and it’s late game and we’ve got a no-hitter or something special going. Seems kinda dumb that they implemented this gunk stuff mid-season but if it results in more dingers? Cool.
I just hope we get a pitcher fully drop trou soon. The streakers are coming from inside the field!
Basically 90% of pitchers are using sticky substances that are heavily increasing their spin rate which makes the ball EXTREMELY harder to hit,the league is having its worst batting average since the late 1800’s/early 1900’s. We’re getting teams AVERAGING a BA below .200 (Which is basically so bad for a player that no matter how good your defense is you are “unplayable”) No-Hitters are happening at an all-time rate and everything is bad and I don’t even care about baseball but I still wrote this what the fuck.
So basically, fuck the pitchers
I’m game for gunk checks now
except dingers are getting boring too. i want sac bunts, double steals, triple plays. SMALL BALL
The best commentary I saw about how the gunk checks are MLB using a nuke to swat a fly came from an Orioles fan pointing out that they checked Mickey Jannis, a knuckleballer, for gunk, and that that was the most 2021 thing MLB could ever do.
Well, knuckleballers are some of the most notorious in baseball history for doctoring balls, albeint usually with sandpaper or emery boards instead of gunk. Just look up Joe Niekro, for example. So that at least kind of checks out.
And woops, didn’t see the reply button. Coffee hasn’t kicked in.
Joe Niekro tossing his emery board out of his back pocket when he thinks all of the umpires inspecting him are looking away will never not be hilarious. Theatrically searching his pockets as if they are empty and then throwing his arms up like “See?! Nothing in these pockets…” while the emery board sails to the turf, it’s just a wonderfully funny moment. Funnier still that before he throws the board out of his pocket, his catcher walks up behind him casually and tries to take the emery board from him in a subtle handoff that may well have fooled the umpires… only to have walked up when Niekro was fiddling in the pocket that didn’t have the emery board in it.
Right, but a knuckleball works by imparting as little spin to the ball as possible by not gripping it with your fingertips. So unlike Joe Niekro’s emery board, gunk would be worse than useless for a knuckleballer.
That’s the best way to describe it honestly. It’s a problem but the MLB is handling it in the worst way possible. I think the main reason everyone is pissed is because the rules regarding these substances were so inconsistent for years and you even had guys like Trevor Bauer speaking up about it as far back as 2017 or 2018. Suddenly they want to aggressively crack down midway through a season?
I still think moving the mound back a few feet is a much better solution if they want to improve hitting across the league. Let ’em use sticky stuff but give the hitter more time to see what’s coming.
A+ hover text.
@jdrefuss well, knuckleballers are some of the most notorious in baseball history for doctoring balls, albeint usually with sandpaper or emery boards instead of gunk. Just look up Joe Niekro, for example. So that at least kind of checks out.
I’m on the other side of the fence and absolutely love pitching duels. That aside, the whole ‘no gunk’ thing was already a rule that MLB just seemed to not bother with until this year, due to the league batting average being flat out terrible.
Aw come on that can’t be Max Scherzer, you gotta draw him with different colored eyes
I agree with Freeform Jazz up there. Home runs and shit are cool, but I love seeing a pitcher operate at the top of his game. It’s just really impressive, and a low scoring game tends to be a faster game. People like to complain that baseball games can take too long, but they also want lots of scoring. Can’t have it both ways.
I wanted to agree with this but then I remembered the 2013 Marlins going into the 11th inning like three times in one week at 0-0 or 1-1 and that was the absolute worst
I thought it was a little ridiculous at first, but then I’ve seen some statistics that have shown that apparently, it’s actually really working. It may be a short-term aberration, but the spin rate on balls has dropped DRAMATICALLY in the last few weeks.
” A baseball head in the comments can clarify this for me but it feels like a vintage case of the sport recognizing a problem and then going about fixing it in the stupidest ways possible that make everyone annoyed.”
nail on the head, bro
Awesome! My idea got done!
(Also yes, please let a pitcher drop their pants and ask the ump outright if he wants to check that “sticky stuff” too, loud enough for all to hear)
Another example of Manfred’s incompetence 101.
Not that ridiculous, especially if it gets streamlined to the point where they can get the checks done when the team coming onto the field is still taking time to warm up. Main mess is that it happened midseason instead of during the offseason, as well as some of the early ones taking place during the middle of the inning. As long as the following 3 get met I think it’s fine 1) Avoid checking in the middle of an inning, that’s what the 3rd Scherzer in the initial start was, just do it between innings 2) make sure they don’t take any stupid amount of time, mainly just make sure they get in before the change in innings is up, which has been mainly from what I’d seen and 3) find *some* way to make sure there’s a standard for what’s “too much” or is actually substance, because if it’s left to discretion of individual umpires it could end with questionable decisions, like some strike zones, this is likely honestly the hardest to address, as the first 2 should be easy to deal with.
Also, it’s not the stupidest thing this year even, extra inning rules are not great, sure it speeds some games up, but still saw a 12 inning mess, it was a solution that wasn’t entirely needed.
It is a dumb solution but it’s really the only way for baseball to do it.
Sticky Stuff was bullying the rest of the game 100% because of MLB apathy and mismanagement.
So they finally have to crack down but in order to clarify or customize the rule they would have to negotiate with the Player’s association.
Instead of having to do that they go with the most ham fisted enforcement of the written rule and basically turn umps into TSA agents.
Hopefully they can work out the kinks in the offseason.