Let's go what's up everybody. Welcome to the bronx pinstripes show. Today i'm joined by stephanie epstein of sports illustrated she was one of the writers on a story that came out a few days ago blowing the lid off the pitcher substance abuse not. Pd's but maybe it should be considered that actual sticky stuff on the baseball stephanie. Thanks so much for joining me. Thanks a lot for having me. This is i was just saying before we press record is seems like there's a story like this every baseball season that talks about something that should not be happening in the game of baseball this year. It's the it's pitchers using illegal substances to doctor the baseball. Of course there was the astros scandal at the end of two thousand nineteen. Pd's back in the nineties. But this seems like that might be the story for twenty twenty one so i guess congratulations on breaking. Yeah this is definitely what What everybody on. The sport is talking about it. A couple of quotes from the article. It did equate it to to steroids. It being that much of an advantage players do you agree with that I think that there are good parallels to steroids. I think it in in the way that it provides an advantage in the way that it's sort of a slippery slope that you like you can get into it sort of slowly doing something that's only that's illegal but not that bad and then all of a sudden you find yourself really down the rabbit hole and then also i think in the way that some pitchers her some players in general felt like they of have to do it just to keep up. I think there's that's same issue of like. I don't want to do this but everybody else's and it's my career at stake so i guess i'm gonna make a choice. I don't feel good about the one of the quotes in the article kind of struck me and it's exactly like the steroids thing it's that whoever whoever gets the best gets promoted to major league baseball and teams don't necessarily care how you're going about that as long as the result of their. They'll look the other way. So if you're a minor league pitcher and you've been working your ass off for a decade to try and get to the majors and you can apply. Little substance engage again few hundred extra. Rpm's on your fastball. Which can get you another couple strikeouts per nine innings and that's going to get you to the big leagues which is going to get you a million dollar check. Why the hell wouldn't you do it. Yeah and in some cases it feels like the team is encouraging you to do it. Sometimes you know. The pitching coach is saying you should consider adding a little sticky stuff that the trainers are handing it out. You know it really feels like the team expects it of you yet. And that's i mean that it's not surprising is certainly not surprising that there coaching their players to use it. Because like you said you gotta do it to keep up. The opponent is using it. What why shouldn't i. I use it. But that just i think highlights the real issue here. Is that how how you ever going to eliminate this from the game or reduced from the game. If it's not just players going about it to do this it's being coached. They have people experimenting with different substances to see what works best. They're using some of these the camera to actually find out this substance performs better than this other substance like did scientifically proven to perform better. So like it's just like we're so far. Seems like it's so far gone at this point. Yeah i think it's way more insidious than people realize. I warned citizens league realized honestly until pretty recently. Do you believe that though. Because i feel like the league. The league is constantly just looking the other way on things. They knew they knew. The extras were doing. Something shady they knew teams were illegally using the video. Replay room and all manfred wanted. All men for did was sent a memo aids and he hoped the memo solved things and obviously didn't solve things so is is is is major league baseball telling umpires to police it. Their version of the two thousand seventeen memo. I think the league often finds what it wants to find in terms of poor behavior and in this case i don't think they were really looking for it until maybe last year and then this year and i don't know i mean we'll see they. I think that in this case it is so clearly making the game worse To have this much. Pitcher dominance that i think they will make a real effort to curb it because otherwise they're going to have to talk about moving the mound back in increasing the size of the bases and doing all this stuff. They don't want to do so. I think there is some hope in the league office that maybe this is actually as bigger problems. Some of the players you're saying it is and maybe this'll this'll meeting only thing they'll have to fix. Yeah i think. Do you think that's the reason that it's or one of the reasons that it's getting so much. Attention is because offense is an all time low right now. Oh for sure yeah. I think that's part of why the difference the big difference. I think between listen starrewards Game more exciting. This makes the game more boring. And so i think that's part of why you see them faster. Act because this sucks. I agree with you. I agree with you it sucks. It's three hours of strikeouts. It's it's gone down. No no no one likes that. Well yeah i guess. The the flip side argument for steroids is that a pitcher could also use steroids. A better could use steroids so in theory. They both get an advantage by using that performance. Drug i don't know how pitcher uses illegal substances on his bat. I mean i guess you could too much george brett. Too much. Pine tar sheriff bat. I mean there's obviously things are a hitter can do to improve their performance..