13 Rosins Why

 

It's rare for me to be shy about a baseball opinion. Especially on here.

I've come of age while blogging, and while when I started my influences were bawdy and pissing on the ESPN broadcasters and slagging off Berman, now everybody's kind of fine with how things are. Pretty much every blogger seems to be pro-pitch clock. I'm...a little closer to neutral on it than most of them, but yeah, I was at a game the other night and I got out of there after 2 and a half hours basically, so that tends to help. 

All of these rules are, inherently, fine. But they seem to slowly be pointing towards an alarming trend in baseball that, honestly, might put me in my usual position of griping while a lot of other people nod and stay silent. And that trend is the following: with the monitoring of pitch timing, constant screening of pitchers for tack, and the heyday of call challenging, umpires right now have more power over the game than they've ever had, and that's not a good thing.

Right now, the New York Mets are eating a roster spot because Phil Cuzzi, the only umpire that seems to be ejecting people for substance usage on the mound seems to think one of the greatest pitchers of his generation was too sticky for his liking one time. If it had been another umpire, this may not have happened. If it had been another night, another circumstance, this may not have happened. But because Cuzzi wanted to be a hardass, and because every added rule in the last five years has given him every opportunity to do so without being reprimanded, Max Scherzer is missing 10 games over a tack usage claim that is, as far as I'm aware, completely unsubstantiated. 

David Cone was trending on Twitter earlier, and I was worried he'd gotten canceled or gotten sick, and the latter of which alarmed me considering I was near where he was Friday night [I'll...talk about it eventually], but it was only because he went in depth about the science of stickiness, and that it was a combination of sweat and rosin that did Scherzer in and came off as an illegal substance to Cuzzi. Meanwhile, I think it's legal to sweat on the ballfield. Lord knows Mark Kotsay's been doing a lot of that lately. And it's definitely legal to use rosin on the ballfield. 

So it's really just an ump making an unsubstantiated claim and knowing that because he's an umpire, it doesn't matter whether or not it's confirmed or not. And that's your big issue. The umpire, in general, has had the same purpose as a weatherman. You know, it's not really based 100% in logic and reality, and it's mostly just an educated guess that is purely in their perspective. The difference is that the entirety of the local news doesn't come down to the actions of the weatherman. 

The weatherman is just a piece of a large, functioning team. Meanwhile, the umpire can add strikes to a count if they think a player's taken a second too long figuring things out, and throw a pitcher out of the game despite a banner night if they think their sweat is off.

This is not the first time I've called for automated umps on this blog. I've done it a lot. I don't care if it's an unpopular opinion, if Phil Cuzzi can potentially taint a Hall of Fame case over an opinion he had, then I'm allowed to have this opinion as well. I know why we don't have them, and it's solely because the umpires have a really good union and Rob Manfred is more scared of the umpire's union than he is of the player's union. Think about that for a second. It's clear that the level of umpiring hasn't improved lately, as people like C.B. Bucknor, Phil Cuzzi and, yes, Angel Hernandez have a subconscious bias that makes them unable to properly call a game, and they still call games and nobody reprimands them. There is a clear problem, in the degree of umpiring, and there is a clear solution, in using automated umps, and yet because of egos and politics and, ultimately, the only union I'm not a fan of, nothing's gonna happen, and if anything, the players are gonna continue to get screwed over while the umps continue to control too much of the game.

And you'd think that officiating in general would be called into question all over sports this year after a Super Bowl literally was ended by a referee essentially deciding to end the game rather than risk a Philadelphia victory, but that's not the case. And I don't think enough people are noticing what's happening. Seasons are literally being decided by officiant bias, and ownership is letting it happen because they're afraid to intervene. 

I think Max Scherzer was wrongfully ejected, and while there has been some nice hubbub that's popped up surrounding this, I don't think it'll actually lead to any reform, and the umps will probably keep doing things like this. So I guess we have to be okay with it. Right?

Okay, it's unfair to David Robertson and the Mets that I do a whole post and don't even mention them despite the custom at the top. The Mets are doing alright, better than one would think given the disappointing factors of this season. Nimmo and Lindor are having awesome years, Pete Alonso has 10 home runs, and even with the depleted rotation [thanks a lot again, Phil], people like Kodai Senga, David Peterson and, SOMEHOW JOEY LUCCHESI are mowing batters down at a nice rate.

D-Rob, by the way, is having an excellent start in the ninth, only giving up 1 run so far and notching four saves. I know that having a closing platoon of David Robertson and Adam Ottavino isn't ideal for Mets fans, especially since both are better known as Yankee setup men, but both men have been excellent so far, and D-Rob has had a second consecutive season with a truly excellent start in the ninth. I sincerely hope he can leg it out all year, I think he's earned a nice, competitive, healthy year.

But yeah, the Mets are doing well enough, I just wish they weren't being screwed over by this Scherzer thing. At the very least they get him back in a week or so, but...it shouldn't have happened to begin with, man.

Coming Tomorrow- A pitcher whose tour of low-market cities that are safe for him to pitch in continues.