The Hidden Crisis of Pitch Tipping in MLB

The New York Yankees already had Max Scherzer's number when they faced him on Sunday at Yankee Stadium. The Toronto Blue Jays ace entered with a career 4.39 ERA against them, compared to a 3.19 ERA overall.

But the Yankees also had something else on Scherzer this time: his pitches.

One of them, anyway. The Yankees picked up on something he was doing before throwing his changeup in the first inning. And with his changeup compromised after a warning from 1B Ty France, Scherzer went to the fastball to retire Ben Rice with runners on first and second.

It did not work. Rice deposited it over the wall for a three-run homer.

Did the Yankees break any MLB rules in sussing out Scherzer's changeup? Technically speaking, no.

But did they draw fresh attention to scandalous behavior that seems to be occurring more frequently? Absolutely, the answer is yes.

Pitch Tipping, Briefly Explained

Lest anyone get confused, what we did not see in the Bronx was a case of sign-stealing.

That was all the rage a couple of years ago, and never more than in 2020 when the Houston Astros were revealed to have used a complex sign-stealing system in 2017. They modernized an ancient act of baseball deceit by using live video to decode catchers' signs and communicate the information to hitters in real time.

In 2025, however, sign-stealing is basically dead. MLB came down hard on the Astros, and subsequently nipped further chicanery in the bud with new video protocols:

• Players are barred from video replay rooms.
• Players did have access to in-game footage of at-bats on iPads, but with the catcher's signals edited out.

In 2022, the introduction of PitchCom all but ended the practice of using hand signals to call pitches.

What is still around, though, is the art of picking up tipped pitches.

Some pitchers have specific routines they follow before throwing certain pitches. It could be how he sets up before he throws. It could be how he wiggles his glove as he gets his grip. In the case of Scherzer, it was as simple as him not hiding the ball.

Here's how the three-time Cy Young Award winner explained it, via David Singh of Sportsnet:

"That's something we're aware of. You can get my changeup out of my glove from first base. Something we've known. It's not just the Yankees. We know across the league, guys can do that. I've had multiple people tell me that, so I thought I had addressed it, thought I had made the proper adjustment to get my glove in front of my face. But, clearly, I hadn't."

The intel for Rice came from Cody Bellinger at first base and Aaron Judge at second base. Bellinger was looking into Scherzer's glove and alerting Judge to changeups by waving his arms up and down. Judge did the same in view of Rice.

In the poker world, they would say the Yankees picked up on Scherzer's "tell." The cards on the table don't speak, but even a subtle expression can say a lot about someone's hand.

To those familiar with the language, the next move becomes obvious.

Why Pitch Tipping Is Suddenly Such a Problem

All is fair in love and war, and apparently pitch tipping as well.

"That's part of the game," Scherzer said after the Blue Jays lost 4-3 to the Yankees. "It's 2025. Everybody knows it, we live it, that's just part of the game."

And yet, there are times when it just feels like something has to give. And MLB is in one of those situations with pitch tipping, as it has evolved from happening in the shadows to no longer even hiding in plain sight.

Whereas there was the odd pitch tipping kerfuffle in 2023 (i.e., Aaron Judge vs. Jay Jackson) and 2024 (i.e., Josh Rojas vs. Clarke Schmidt), the kerfuffles have been downright kerfuffling in 2025. Here's a timeline of incidents:

• April 19: Seattle Mariners vs. José Berríos and the Toronto Blue Jays
• June 30: Boston Red Sox vs. Chase Burns and the Cincinnati Reds
• July 10: New York Yankees vs. Andrés Muñoz and the Seattle Mariners
• August 12: Boston Red Sox vs. Robert Suarez and the San Diego Padres
• August 28: Philadelphia Phillies vs. Ryan Helsley and the New York Mets
• September 7: New York Yankees vs. Max Scherzer and the Toronto Blue Jays

Not all of these have resulted in cooler heads prevailing. The situation between the Mariners and Blue Jays in August, in which Berríos had words for Cal Raleigh, resulted in the benches clearing.

Though Scherzer isn't wrong about the prevalence of pitch tipping, Raleigh's postgame insistence that he'd "want my pitchers doing the same thing" hints at a fundamental dilemma: Just because pitchers know pitch tipping is part of the game, it doesn't mean they have to like it.

And in this day and age, they have a right to be more paranoid.

With sign-stealing extinct, pitch tipping is the only game left in town when it comes to gamesmanship. And technology has clearly entered the chat, as the Red Sox were caught tablet-handed when they got to Suarez last month:

It's thus fair to ask the question: Where, exactly, is the line between gamesmanship and cheating?

What Can MLB (or Anyone) Do About Pitch Tipping?

Hitting is timing. Pitching is interrupting timing.

That's what the Batter vs. Pitcher matchup is supposed to be about, anyway. But even if it's not illegal, pitch tipping does bastardize things. If the batter knows what's coming—or, in the case of Rice, not coming—it's a bit like the climactic moment in The Good, the Bad and the Ugly when one of the gunfighters in the final duel is revealed to have had no bullets. The darn thing was rigged.

But if the question is what Major League Baseball can do about it, there isn't much in the way of good answers.

The league could make it illegal for batters to communicate tipped pitches, but how would that be enforceable? Would umpires eject anyone who makes an unusual movement? Would someone from the league office be able to tell a team like the Red Sox, "How dare you do advanced scouting on your opponent!"

Probably the only workable solution would be to allow teams to file formal complaints when they suspect a pitch-tipping scheme, but it likely wouldn't take long for accusations to spin out of control. This is one of those things that is probably even more widespread than we think. It is an effective way to gain an advantage, after all, and hitters need all the help they can get in an era when the average hitter is batting in the .240s.

Besides, you have to figure the accused would have many excuses to press their plausible deniability. Were Bellinger and Judge relaying pitches...or were they just stretching? As long as nobody blabbed, the pitch-tipping narcs would be none the wiser.

Of course, what makes the Yankees vs. Blue Jays situation unique is that the offenders did 'fess up. "That's what was happening," was Bellinger's response when asked if he was signaling, thus driving home the final nail in the coffin of any notion of subtlety.

Even if relaying tipped pitches is nothing new, that someone would be this blatant about it does feel new. To hear it from A.J Pierzynski and Erik Kratz of Foul Territory, what the Yankees did used to come with the risk of a beaning:

"This is when baseball used to be able to police itself," Pierzynski said. "You would try to give signs, you had to be super quiet about it. Now it's like little league where the kids are like, 'Hey, over here and over here!'

"In the big leagues when you're grown men, you wanna stop it? Turn around and step off. Walk out there if you're Max Scherzer, and say to Aaron Judge, 'If you do it again, I'm gonna hit the guy hitting."

Indeed, knowing that you or a teammate could wear one for actions the pitcher didn't like used to be a real fear. And in the abstract, hitting a guy as payback for gaining an undue edge makes more sense than serving an HBP as payback for, say, a bat flip. The latter is merely a threat to a pitcher's pride, whereas the former is a threat to his livelihood.

That said, "What baseball needs is more intentional hit-by-pitches" is a hard message to get behind.

There's too much injury risk at a time when almost everyone throws 95-plus mph. And these days, umpires have itchy trigger fingers with ejections if they suspect a drilling was intentional.

Instead, the path of least resistance and least harm is obvious: Pitchers just shouldn't tip their pitches.

This feels a bit like blaming the victim, but it all goes back to pitch tipping being like a tell. If a poker player has a tell and other players pick up on it, it's not their fault for noticing it. It's the fault of the player with the tell for having it.

Scherzer is a good example. After the Yankees picked up on his changeup on Sunday, it's not like he stopped throwing it. Of the 17 changeups he threw, 14 came after the first inning. In the end, none were hit into play and he allowed only one more run after the first inning.

This is a future Hall of Famer we're talking about, yet he still made the mistake of tipping in the first place. Him adjusting accordingly should not be seen as veteran wisdom in action. Just common sense.

This is obviously "easier said than done" advice, but pitchers frankly should know their habits better than opposing hitters do. And if they do find out they have entered into a rigged game, it shouldn't be that hard to unrig it.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.