Rosenthal: To strengthen the Mets and maintain greatness, Max Scherzer needs to adapt to the new rules

If I didn’t know better, I’d almost think Max Scherzer was having a midlife crisis in baseball.

Scherzer Being Scherzer, one of the greatest shooters of our generation, I’m not going to go that far, and I’m sure he’ll figure it all out. pitch clock. sticky stuff. Even the physical part, though no one can be sure how his body will handle it, considering he’ll be turning 39 on July 27.

This one is pretty clear: Scherzer needs to get it together, or the $358 million Mets are going to be in big trouble. As it stands, the prospect of his being suspended 10 games into Wednesday’s Rosen-A-Rama game at Dodger Stadium adds to a rotation that’s already without Jose Quintana and Carlos Carrasco, and is still waiting for another $43 million prize ace, Justin Verlander, to return from injury.

Kodai Senga, 30, is practically the last man standing for the Mets, and it’s not the result anyone expected yet. New York Post He stated that my physicality with the team was “questionable”. Scherzer, who twice dealt oblique/lateral issues last season and worked 145 1/3 innings, his lowest total in an entire campaign, was supposed to start on Sunday, but his start was pushed back to Wednesday due to lingering pain in his shoulder. his shoulder. He looked good against the Dodgers, hitting three scoreless innings. But then, he was expelled for using an illegal foreign substance.

In the aftermath, Scherzer and his agent Scott Boras appeared on one side and referee Phil Causey and crew chief Dan Bellino on the other. Scherzer said he kept telling jumpers that his hand and glove were sticky only because of the sweat and rosin. He swore on the lives of his children that he had not used anything illegal. He told reporters, “I must be an absolute idiot to attempt anything,” after he had already been double-checked and warned.

Here’s Scherzer’s problem, even if, he said, a league official watched him after the third inning wash his hands in alcohol under the bleachers: a memo sent by the league to all 30 clubs in spring training, detailing a more aggressive crackdown on the sticky stuff. , explained that rosin in certain cases can be considered an illegal substance.

After he washed his hand, Scherzer said, he applied the rosin and sweated before returning to the mound. However, the only approved rosin bag is only inspected by the umpires before the game and is brought by the game’s compliance officer to the mound. Any type of Scherzer rosin used in the tunnel is not approved.

“Please keep in mind that a player’s use of rosin must always be consistent with the requirements and expectations of the Official Baseball Rules,” the memo said. “When used excessively or in the wrong way, i.e. gloves or other parts of the uniform, umpires may decide that rosin is a prohibited foreign substance, and its use may result in a player being subject to expulsion and discipline.”

like the athleteMemo Jason Stark said last month that referee checks for pitchers will be more thorough and less predictable, could expand again to include items like hats and gloves, and will take place before and after rounds, not just after.

In a statement to reporters, Porras said the league needs to follow an “objective, verifiable standard” on such matters, adding that “a Cuzzi spectrometer on the field is not the answer.” Fans familiar with Les Miserables might consider Cuzzi to be the Javert of sticky-thing slanderer. Scherzer is the third pitcher to be taken out since the start of the campaign. Cuzzi was also part of the crew that knocked out former Mariners pitcher Hector Santiago and former Diamondbacks pitcher Caleb Smith in 2021.

However, Bellino fully backed Cuzzi, telling a Pool reporter, “It was the hardest it’s been since I’ve been checking hands, which now goes back three seasons. Compared to the first half, the stickiness level, it was so sticky that when we touched his hand, our fingers were Glued to his hand, and what was there stayed on our fingers after that for a few rounds where you can still feel it. The fingers were glued together. It was a lot more than we’ve ever seen on a pitcher in live action.”

As for Boras’ call for “clear and precise criteria,” the league believes the players’ association may oppose the use of off-field metrics such as turnover rates to identify violations. The league also maintains that umpires are trained to determine if a pitcher is using an illegal substance, and that inspections must take place on the field. Scherzer, who would presumably receive the automatic ten-game suspension that the memo promised any pitcher ejected for sticky stuff, could appeal to a neutral referee.

The difference between Scherzer and the Yankees’ Domingo German, who avoided being ejected after checking him for foreign material, was that the umpires determined that German’s hand was tacky but not sticky. Taki is fine. Sticky it is not. “It sounds silly, but there is a difference,” Causey said.

Scherzer isn’t a fan of on-field inspections, as he said this week in “bean areathat he believed it should take place in private, out of view of television cameras. He also raised concerns about pitch clock, saying it could result in more pitchers being injured once the weather gets hot.

His points are, as always, thought-provoking. His difficulty adjusting to the clock, as an older pitcher who had never experienced it in the minors, is understandable. Scherzer said earlier this month that he struggles most with handling the clock at the starting bat when he’s a runner on base. The way the game was going, he had more time.

The problem with Scherzer and other veteran pitchers is that there is likely to be no turning back. It is not around the clock. Not from applying adhesive.

Players have brought it all upon themselves, pitchers and hitters by taking their sweet time over the years, pitchers by resorting to illegal substances to make their stuff nastier. The watch may not be perfect. A reasonable modification would be to add three seconds to each of the 15-second timer with no one running and the 20-second timer with runners on base. But as popular as innovation seems, the likely association is: Why bother?

The bottom line is that Scherzer needs to stop running off in windmills and resume controlling his opponents, limiting his dram when he’s on the mound. Maybe he’ll be vindicated for Rosin-a-rama’s sake. He definitely thinks he did nothing wrong. But in the end, his team was left in a bind, and the Mets needed to use five more pitchers to secure a 5-3 victory. Scherzer’s comment would only complicate matters further.

Maintaining your health will be enough challenge for Scherzer. Even if he’s right about everything, all that really matters to the Mets and their fans is that he’s back in Hall of Fame form. He needs to adjust to baseball in 2023. And he needs to accept that the landscape has changed. He needs to know all of this, and soon.

(Photo: Katelyn Mulcahy/Getty Images)