MLB Reportedly Will Encourage 'Sticky Stuff' Enforcement During 2023 Season

Pitchers better be ready for more random checks from umpires this season.

According to Jayson Stark of The Athletic, during the annual spring meetings Major League Baseball "informed club officials it will encourage umpires to refocus on the use of sticky stuff this season."

Stark outlined a few of the ways MLB plan to instruct umpires to more strictly enforce the ban on pitchers using sticky substances to make them more effective:

• More thorough inspections of a pitcher's hands and fingers
• Those inspections being done more randomly
• "Caps, gloves and belts" also being inspected with more regularity
  
• "Umpires would be empowered to be more aggressive about inspecting pitchers than in the past," giving them more leeway to do a random check if they noticed a suspicious pattern of behavior from a pitcher

Stark also noticed that spin rates had continued to rise until MLB first cracked down on getting sticky substances out of the game around June 2021 and they've trended upwards as the checks for those substances have grown lax.

"Pitchers have the ultimate advantage right now, with sticky stuff, the dead ball, and humidors," a major league hitter told The Athletic's Eno Sarris in September.

"Of course it is," a separate major league hitter said when shown data in September that spin rates had risen again. "The umpire checks are almost useless."

The result is that the game isn't as exciting, at least for fans who enjoy offense. In 2021, there were 22,002 runs scored across the American and National Leagues. In 2022, that number dropped back down to 20,817, its lowest since 2015.

Home runs, meanwhile, went from 5,940 in 2021 to 5,215 last season.

As Greg Maddox once said in a Nike commercial, "Chicks dig the long ball." More spin rate generally means fewer home runs. It's a problem baseball appears intent on correcting.