Fired by the Los Angeles Angels for providing pitchers with “foreign substances” so they could better hold baseball, former Los Angeles Angels visiting club manager Brian “Bubba” Harkins is counterattacking.
And he is quoting names.
Harkins is suing the Angels and MLB after being fired last month for supplying his homemade mixture of pine tar and resin for pitchers. It is technically illegal, but sticky substances are widely used in baseball to help pitchers have a better grip and, many believe, to improve rotation speed.
Harkins said he didn’t earn any money, he just did a service, something that any good club manager should do.
Many pitchers evidently agreed.
Harkins highlighted a text by the current New York Yankees pitcher, Gerrit Cole.
“Hey, Bubba, it’s Gerrit Cole,” says the text. “I was wondering if you could help me with this complicated situation [winky face emoji]. We won’t see you until May, but we have some road games in April that are in cold weather locations. What I had last year crashes when it gets cold … ”
Justin Verlander, who at the time was Cole’s teammate in Houston, is also mentioned in Harkin’s files.
Harkins says Verlander told him that the MLB started cracking down on foreign substances when it discovered that some teams were using chemicals to find a substance that would maximize the rate of rotation.
Last February, the MLB informed teams that club employees were prohibited from “supplying, applying, creating, hiding or otherwise facilitating the use of foreign substances by players on the field”.
But that crackdown – if it is happening – has not yet spread to any player, which is why Harkins believes that a scapegoat is being made.
Harkins reportedly identified Cole, Verlander, Edwin Jackson, Max Scherzer, Felix Hernandez, Corey Kluber, Joba Chamberlain and Adam Wainwright among the pitchers who requested his pine / resin tar mixture.
Read the full ESPN report here.
Free agent pitcher Trevor Bauer has argued vehemently that foreign substances can greatly improve the rotation rate – and therefore the pitcher’s performance – and has fought Cole in the past over the problem.
He took a victory lap on Friday.