NLCS: Phillies Beat Padres at Home in Game 3

“We’ll watch and see,” Thomson before the game, almost as a friendly warning. “If we think the guy’s cheating intentionally, we’ll call him on it.”

That is what Buck Showalter, the Mets manager, did in Game 3 of their N.L. wild-card series. Showalter asked the umpires to check Musgrove for a banned substance on his person. Musgrove was in the process of throwing seven shutout innings, with only one hit, and the Mets noticed that Musgrove was throwing slightly harder than his normal average fastball velocity, and that the rate of spin on his pitches was higher than in his recent outings.

Last year, Major League Baseball began enforcing a ban on foreign substances, which many pitchers had been using to increase their grip on the baseball, allowing them to spin it more and achieve more movement on pitches.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/10/21/sports/baseball/phillies-padres-nlcs-game-3-score.html