Blake Snell Chased a No-No, Is MLB Cracking Down on Pitching Cheats?

Blake Snell is a terrific pitcher, and he had a no-hitter going through six on Friday night against the New York Mets. The interesting part about that was the fact that Snell is a straight six-inning, modern-day pitcher. To the point that he hadn’t pitched in the seventh since 2019.

After some on-air discussion, Snell indeed came out of the dugout to pitch. Some pitchers have been pulled with a partial no-hitter brewing but that didn’t happen. Snell did give up one hit through seven with 10 strikeouts. There have been six no-hitters already this season and his teammate, Joe Musgrove has one of them. The Padres have never had one at home, but the bigger question is would he have pitched the eighth inning if the Mets still didn’t have a hit?

He threw 101 pitches. He’s been taken out of games with just 87. I realize they are trying to preserve him and try and get him back to his 21-win form, but there are going to be some games this year when you want him to be able to go eight if he’s cruising to save the bullpen. I’ll be curious to see if that happens later this season.

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Is MLB Cracking Down on Pitching Cheats?

Josh Donaldson, a player who has played in both leagues, stated that he has a video catalog of pitchers cheating, doctoring the baseball, getting an edge, whatever you want to call it but is keeping that footage to himself. Why?

MLB Commissioner, Rob Manfred talked about this kind of crackdown during the season and so far, it’s been minimal. A few moments, and no suspensions. Donaldson claims the video is “coming out soon” as he said on social media, but why threaten it and why not just have it drop organically?

It amazes me that Manfred hasn’t publicly commented on this yet. Shouldn’t he have called in Donaldson to view the footage? After all, he is the steward of the game, and it’s his duty to see these things before it becomes an all-out scandal. Or does baseball like a little scandal because it gets people talking? That might be the internal debate.

There’s no doubt there are pitchers that are squeaky clean. There always are,, and then there’s always cheaters, no matter what, there always are, but again, we are talking about a game here. A game with high salaries. I get that part but, in the end, shouldn’t the game be as close to pure as it can be? This isn’t Hollywood. Sports isn’t 100% entertainment. If it was Tom Cruise, as an example, perform every single stunt instead of chosen ones, which is still amazing. No Hollywood actor gets hit in the face with an errant pitch like Kevin Pillar for their craft. If you’re talking about showmanship, that’s a different conversation. Manfred should get ahead of this. Let’s see if he does.