Max Scherzer Responded To Accusations Of Using Sticky Stuff By Taking Off His Hat And Unbuckling His Pants

Baseball is cracking down on pitchers using things to help them enhance their grip on the ball. It’s led to plenty of grumbling around the league — one pitcher, Tampa Bay Rays ace Tyler Glasnow, is convinced this led to him suffering a potentially season-ending injury — and on Tuesday night, we got a sense of how extremely annoyed Washington Nationals star Max Scherzer is with the whole thing.

Scherzer was on the mound against the Philadelphia Phillies. On several occasions, Scherzer was checked to see if he was using grip, and the pitcher wasn’t a big fan of the stoppage to take care of this.

Then, Phillies manager Joe Girardi called for a third check, and Scherzer got so annoyed that he came awfully close to pulling his pants down while on the mound to get his point across.

Ultimately, though, Scherzer and the Nats got the last laugh, as the prodded Girardi to the point that he got ejected.

MLB did such an awful job of rolling this out — the crackdown on things that give pitchers more grip came midseason and was sweeping to the point that they aren’t allowed to use anything, with an automatic ejection and 10-day suspension for anyone caught using anything — that Girardi is taking advantage of this in an attempt to throw Scherzer off his game. Of course, that implies the tactic would work, and seeing as how Scherzer allowed one run in five innings before Girardi got tossed, that was not the case.