Chris Perez: Widespread Use Of Pine Tar By Pitchers In MLB

One the big stories this week in baseball was the brouhaha between the Rays and Nationals during their interleague series in DC. Nationals manager Davey Johnson had the umpires check the glove of Rays’ reliever Joel Peralta for pine tar, utilizing intel gathered when Peralta pitched in the Nats’ organization. Peralta was ejected and the glove was confiscated, all leading to a very enjoyable week of back-and-forth between Johnson and Joe Maddon that used phrases such as “weird wuss” and went deep into discussion of a “Tweeter.”

Well, the Indians’ Chris Perez has never met a controversy he didn’t like to comment on, and the Tribe closer decided to weigh in on the use of pine tar on Friday:

“If before every game if they stopped and checked everybody’s gloves or something there would be one or two guys on every team that would just get popped”

[…]

“I’ve only played for two teams and more guys did it on the Cardinals than here,” he said. “That’s the only thing I was trying to say. It wasn’t like an organizational thing.”

Did Perez just implicate his teammates? The closer also said the use of the rosin bag and sweat combine to create nearly the same effect as pine tar.