Last week, an experienced front-office evaluator watched a thriving veteran struggle to spin what had been, until recent days, a devastating, difference-making breaking ball -- and thought: a sticky-stuff guy. This pitcher might be Clark Kent instead of Superman, the evaluator believes, without the Spider Tack or homemade super glue or whatever he might've been using.
A coaching staffer made the same observation about a high-profile reliever in the AL East -- a pitcher whose impeccable command of fastballs at the top of the zone is suddenly not so impeccable. It's very possible, that staffer decided, that this reliever cannot be great without foreign substances.
A former superstar pitcher notes that high-priced pitchers are abandoning curveballs, sliders and four-seam fastballs, instead throwing more changeups and two-seam fastballs. The foreign-substance crackdown is creating a whole new context under the baseball umbrella -- in the majors, in the minors and even among draft-eligible players. For that reason, mass reassessment is occurring on the fly, and the baseball calendar requires that the review must happen rapidly.