Los Angeles Dodgers Manager, Dave Roberts, has expressed concern that one of its star players, Trevor Bauer, has been chosen in a major Major League Baseball effort to reduce the illegal use of foreign substances in baseballs.
Bauer’s name appeared in a recent report on The Athletic’s website, which said that several baseballs were collected for inspection after they were found to have visible marks and felt sticky. Bauer complained about the report through his Twitter account and criticized MLB for leaking information about “an allegedly confidential trial.”
“I understand that the referees are collecting baseballs from all the pitchers and balls that were in play to collect evidence,” Roberts said Friday morning before his team opened. “That’s something I get from. I just hope our player won’t be chosen. That’s the only thing I want to protect myself from.”
MLB, which has spent the past year trying to control pitchers using foreign substances in an effort to maximize cornering speed and generate more change and error, issued a note to teams on March 23, introducing three new methods.
It included two employees and a compliance monitor during the game stationed at each stadium, partly responsible for identifying violations of foreign substances. The league also said it would review Statcast data to identify alarming peaks in speed and instruct field staff, including referees, “to send baseballs out of the game to the commissioner’s office for further inspection. And documentation ”.
“They will give priority to those that contain potential evidence of a foreign substance,” the note said, “but will also select the balls at random to ensure full coverage.”
Some of these will be outsourced to a laboratory for further inspections, but sources said ESPN that the league will spend the 2021 season mainly in the way information is collected. Bauer is not currently facing a possible league penalty. But the inspected findings could be used as evidence to support the punishment in the future.
Bauer publicly criticized the league’s original note, posting a 23-minute video on YouTube questioning MLB’s intent.