Major League Baseball’s crisis of the moment will be worth the short-term distraction, Commissioner Rob Manfred said on Wednesday, if the league’s effort restores balance to the product on the field. The league’s enhanced enforcement of foreign-substance usage by pitchers has made mandatory umpire checks a strange new sight in every game.
"I’d like to make our fans comfortable that players are following the rules,” Manfred said in a telephone interview. "I think that’s really important in terms of the integrity of the game. In terms of the outcome piece of it, it is my expectation, and my hope, that what we are seeing in the early numbers turns out to be the overall result — that is, higher batting average, higher on-base percentage, higher slugging, lower strikeout rate, lower walk rate and less hit-by-pitches. That’s what we’re seeing right now, and we hope that holds.”
With a limited schedule on Monday, the introduction of mandatory between-inning checks of pitchers by umpires went by without incident. But on Tuesday in Philadelphia, Washington’s Max Scherzer reacted angrily to an inspection on the mound ordered by Phillies manager Joe Girardi. And in Texas, Oakland reliever Sergio Romo comically removed his belt and dropped his pants when umpires checked him.