Pitchers Are Dropping Their Pants Because They’ve Already Had It With MLB’s Sticky Substance Checks (2024)

MLB pitchers are trying to avoid getting caught with their pants down by the league’s new crackdown on sticky substances by…literally pulling their pants down.

This week marks the start of MLB’s enhanced enforcement of their ban on pitchers using foreign substances to get a better grip on the ball and improve the spin rate on their pitches.

And some pitchers are already over it.

Jacob DeGrom of the Mets was the first pitcher who was subjected to the sticky substance checks as he walked off the mound during Monday’s game against the Braves.

But things got heated on Tuesday when Max Scherzer was checked three times during the first four innings of the Washington Nationals’ game against the Philadelphia Phillies.

Scherzer was clearly annoyed during the first two checks, but complied and went on about his business.

But when Phillies manager Joe Girardi then requested that Scherzer be checked again IN THE MIDDLE OF AN INNING, Scherzer was (justifiably, in my opinion) pretty annoyed and started to drop his pants to prove that he had nothing to hide.

Scherzer was clearly frustrated with Girardi for requesting that he be checked, and the pair had a heated exchange following the fifth inning that resulted in Girardi being ejected from the game.

Then later on in the day, things got even crazier during the matchup between the Oakland A’s and the Texas Rangers when Oakland reliever Sergio Romo literally dropped his pants on the field during a sticky substance check.

Safe to say that pitchers have already had it with the new enforcement of the sticky substance ban.

And it’s hard to say I blame them.

I mean, MLB is out here worried about players touching their hats during a game when they literally had a team video recording their way to the World Series just a couple years ago…