Is Doctoring MLB Equipment Worse Than Using Performance-Enhancing Drugs?

The Tampa Bay Rays and the Washington Nationals got into a bit of a disagreement on Tuesday night after Rays reliever Joel Peralta was ejected from the game in the eighth inning before he even threw a pitch. 

At Nationals manager Davey Johnson's request, the umpiring crew converged on the mound and inspected Peralta's glove. Home-plate umpire Tim Tschida gave Peralta the boot after finding a “significant amount” of pine tar in his glove.

Well, that is against the rules. Tschida had every right to kick Peralta out of the game.

As Rays manager Joe Maddon saw it, however, Tschida should never have been out there in the first place. Per The Washington Post, he called Johnson's request a "cowardly" move, and he said he was annoyed with the Nationals for singling out Peralta for doing something that has been going on for a long time.

"This is just how the game has been played for 100 years, more than that,” said Maddon.

He's right, you know. Pitchers have been doctoring baseballs since the dawn of time, and they're not going to suddenly stop doctoring baseballs just because Peralta got caught red-handed (black-handed?) on Tuesday night.

It may be cheating, but it's part of the game.

Just like, you know, performance-enhancing drugs. They're outlawed, but they're still out there.

One thing that will always be true of baseball players is that they will do what they can to gain a competitive edge. If that means breaking the rules, so be it. As the saying goes, if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'.

The question I want to ask is this: Which is a "worse" form of cheating? Doctoring equipment or using performance-enhancing drugs?

Gather around, friends. It's time for a discussion.

Advantages of Using PEDs

When people hear the phrase "performance-enhancing drugs" used in conjunction with Major League Baseball, they think of things like steroids, human growth hormone and androstenedione (or "andro" if you're into the whole brevity thing).

These are indeed the big ones, and they're drugs that definitely have a significant effect.

There's a helpful article about the advantages and disadvantages of these PEDs on MayoClinic.com. Here's what it has to say about anabolic steroids:

"

Besides making muscles bigger, anabolic steroids may help athletes recover from a hard workout more quickly by reducing the muscle damage that occurs during the session. This enables athletes to workout harder and more frequently without overtraining. In addition, some athletes may like the aggressive feelings they get when they take the drugs.

"

In a nutshell, anabolic steroids help athletes get bigger and stronger and stay bigger and stronger. Nothing you haven't heard before, I'm guessing.

HGH, meanwhile, helps improve muscle mass and performance, which means it has more or less the same effect on the human body as anabolic steroids.

Andro is a little different. It's a hormone that is converted to testosterone within the human body. It's yet another thing that allows athletes to train harder and recover faster, though some studies have refuted the notion that this is actually true. It's been found that andro is actually converted to estrogen, which wouldn't help men all that much.

We're only talking about three different substances here. MLB's banned substance list has nearly 200 drugs listed on it. You can find a breakdown of all the different substances and their effects at ProCon.org.

A lot of the drugs on the list are meant to encourage muscle growth and endurance. Others help mask the detection of PEDs. A few others simply contribute to weight loss. Rest assured, Major League Baseball has covered all the bases, so to speak.

The PEDs that fans oftentimes overlook are the stimulants on the list. These are the drugs that increase alertness, aggressiveness and even competitiveness. Amphetamines, or "greenies," were once widely consumed in baseball, and some players undoubtedly still use them.

All of this traces back to our original point about baseball players doing what they can to get an edge. When players use PEDs, they're getting a physical edge. When they use stimulants, they're effectively heightening their ability to grind it out for nine innings at a time.

The grind is what it's all about. There's the grind of the season itself, and there's the grind of nine-inning games day after day after day.

These drugs help players deal with it in a way that's, in a word, unnatural.

Advantages of Doctoring Equipment

This is a one-sided discussion. Both hitters and pitchers are capable of doctoring equipment, but hitters can't necessarily gain an edge by doctoring their bats.

There's a myth that corked bats help players swing faster and hit balls harder, but it's just that: a myth. It's been found that corked bats really don't do all that much.

When Sammy Sosa got caught with a corked bat back in 2003, it didn't take long for experts on physics to come to his defense...while at the same time insinuating that he was dumb.

According to an Associated Press report from 2003, a study at the Baseball Research Center (pretty cool that there is such a thing) concluded that corked bats move one mile per hour faster than uncorked bats. That's a minimal increase. One percent, to be exact.

Corked bats move quicker because they're lighter, but that's not an advantage. Via an article from the Smithsonian, we know that lighter bats have less inertia, or less resistance to other physical objects. Therefore, a baseball won't jump off a corked bat the way it does off an uncorked bat.

So, if you're a major leaguer and you want to hit more home runs, don't use a corked bat. It won't help.

Now, as for pitchers doctoring baseballs...well, that's a different story.

Doctoring the baseball is all about creating extra movement. Scuffing the baseball "creates unusual turbulence" according to Slate.com, and the use of substances like pine tar, spit and various other "goops" can help pitchers get a better grip on the ball. If they have a better grip, they can put more spin on it.

More spin equals more movement, and more movement equals a pitch that's a lot harder to hit. Simple stuff.

However, Joe Maddon was on to something when he said that pitchers doctoring baseballs is just part of the game. It's not an exaggeration to say that every pitcher is doing it.

Consider this passage from Dirk Hayhurst's memoir, Out of My League (page 328 if you have the hardcover copy):

"

Then the real supplies came out: various goops and stick 'ems that some morally sensitive fans would call the use of cheating, while we in the business simply called having an edge. There was good old-fashioned pine tar, the granddaddy of baseball grip agents that always seemed to leak and cake on everything it came into contact with no matter how well it was sealed. We had a tube of Firm Grip, a scientifically engineered knockoff of pine tar, except when you worked it into your fingers, the harder you pressed the more grip you got. Firm Grip is a lot easier to apply to those tight spots, like belt loops, hat bills, and the creases of your mitt without making a complete mess of yourself -- that, and it doesn't make your fingers smell like a pine tree.

"

Hayhurst goes on to describe how gel shaving creams and sunscreens can also be used to get a tighter grip on the ball. That goes to show that pitchers are open to experimentation when it comes to "having an edge."

All of this stuff was in a bag that the San Diego Padres kept in their bullpen during the 2008 season, so it's not like we're talking about ancient history. And if the Peralta mess is any indication, this stuff is still very much out there.

And that's the big question. If everyone is cheating, is it really cheating?

Not really.

The cheating isn't the crime. The crime is getting caught. As Hunter S. Thompson once said, the only sin in a world full of thieves is stupidity.

So Which Is Worse?

If Peralta had actually been allowed to pitch on Tuesday night, he would have been pitching with a foreign substance on his fingers. That foreign substance would have helped him get a better grip on the ball, thus allowing him to throw nastier pitches.

And it would have been nothing that Nationals hitters haven't already seen before.

So, when it comes down to whether doctoring equipment or using performance-enhancing drugs is a "worse" form of cheating, there's really no comparison.

Corked bats don't help, and doctoring pitches is something that most pitchers do on a regular basis. It's the norm. Players using performance-enhancing drugs, however, essentially serve as examples for why they're called performance-enhancing drugs in the first place.

Manny Ramirez was hitting .348 with a .641 slugging percentage when he was banned for testing positive for a PED in 2009. He came back and hit .269 with a .492 slugging percentage the rest of the way, and is now a disgraced slugger looking for work.

Alex Rodriguez admitted he used steroids from 2001 to 2003 when he was with the Texas Rangers. Those seasons, he averaged 52 home runs. He's hit 50 home runs in a single season once in eight years since then, averaging 36 home runs per season.

Barry Bonds tested positive for steroids in 2000. He hit a career-high 49 home runs that season and 73 the year after. He ended up hitting 317 home runs over the final eight years of his career. He hit a total of 445 in the first 14 years of his career.

These are three players among dozens (hundreds?) that we know took performance-enhancing drugs.

Yeah, they help. Taking PEDs is a hell of a lot worse than doctoring equipment.

If you want to talk baseball, hit me up on Twitter.