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This Is Spider Tack: The Men Who Inadvertently Created MLB’s Stickiest Problem
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(David P.)
Jun 17, 2021, 6:29:12 PM6/17/21
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This Is Spider Tack: The Men Who Inadvertently Created MLB’s Stickiest Problem
By Andrew Beaton, 6/11/21, Wall St. Journal
James Deffinbaugh, who weighs 250 lbs & deadlifts 750 lbs,
recently noticed something curious about the niche grip-
enhancing product called Spider Tack that he invented
more than a decade ago.
The product was conceived to help hulking people like him
lift massive boulders into the air. But sales had suddenly
skyrocketed, & he was shipping the goop to new customers
in unexpected places.
“When the orders started to pick up, there were some orders
directly to teams,” Deffinbaugh says. “That’s how I realized
it was being used in baseball.”
That sticky stuff he created is now the center of a
burgeoning controversy in the sport. MLB said before the
season it planned to crack down on pitchers using foreign
substances that allow them to grip & throw the ball with
more spin.
Yet this year has been filled with speculation that pitchers
are doing that more than ever. Strikeouts are higher than
ever. Batting average is flirting with the lowest mark ever.
Hitters look helpless.
Pitchers doctoring baseballs is as old as peanut shells
littering the stands. But there are two things that are new.
The first is that modern tech can precisely measure how much
a ball spins, effectively quantifying the effect of a foreign
aid. The second is called Spider Tack.
It was designed for strongman competitions. It was popular
in wheelchair sports. Now it’s throwing baseball into chaos.
Michael Caruso & Deffinbaugh had no intention of creating
something pitchers would use to enhance their grips & alter
baseballs. They were weightlifting buddies. And back in 2009,
they were looking for some help lifting enormous rocks.
The hallmark event in competitions like the World’s Strongest
Man is called the Atlas Stones. The event is pretty much in
the name. Competitors need to lift &carry a series of stones,
which weigh hundreds of pounds, & place them on a platform.
The stones are round, & they don’t have handles—which means
gripping them is as difficult as lifting them.
Caruso &Deffinbaugh had tried plenty of substances, which
aren’t prohibited in their sport, to help them out in the
event. The ones they used were expensive & didn’t work
especially well. They set out to create a better one.
They weren’t just a couple of ordinary gym hounds who happened
to have a fantastical notion that they could chemically devise
a new product. Caruso has a Ph.D. in molecular biology, had
some background in chemistry & worked in a lab where he had
access to some instruments they needed. They developed a resin-
based substance & finally came up with something they loved.
“It’s the stickiest thing,” Caruso says. “It’s ridiculous.”
Spider Tack has an amber color, & Caruso compared its
viscosity to room-temp molasses. When you stick your finger
in a jar of it & start pulling away, it’s so sticky that it
wants to adhere to itself & creates webs of the stuff. Voila.
The webs gave it the name: Spider Tack.
They thought so much of this product that they initially
created just for themselves that they decided to try selling
it commercially in 2010. They also knew the market was limited.
Almost all of their small number of sales went to two distinct
communities where grip strength is paramount. One, as they
expected, was the strongman community. The other was a bit
more surprising: wheelchair sports, such as wheelchair racing
& wheel rugby, where competitors can’t have their hands slip.
Those markets were never big enough to make this much more
than a side hustle. Caruso retired from doing strongman
events. Deffinbaugh still competes & runs a gym in N Carolina.
“It’s always been a hobby business,” Deffinbaugh says. “It
was definitely nothing we could make a career off of.”
“Then,” he adds, “the last couple days, it’s been crazy.”
Recent days have seen a crescendo of allegations against
players believed to be using the stuff. They say it’s behind
why pitchers are dominating & batters are struggling.
“Pitchers are using a lot more substances now than they have
in the past,” Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto said recently.
There’s a reason pitchers have long surreptitiously used
foreign substances like pine tar. Such substances alter a
pitcher’s grip on the ball, & can even change the ball itself,
allowing them to make the best pitches in baseball even
better. Pitchers can make their sliders break more sharply.
They can make 4-seam fastballs more devastating.
As far as foreign substances go, Spider Tack is like
pine tar on steroids.
In one experiment, comparing the effect of using Spider
Tack to sunscreen & rosin, The Athletic found that a pitcher
gained over 500 RPMs on his fastball using Spider Tack. That
was the difference between a spin rate that was well below
average to one that was far above average.
Spider Tack is so sticky that its inventors can’t even
fathom how pitchers use it. “I don’t even know how they use
it to throw a ball,” Caruso says.
The prevailing notion surrounding MLB is that pitchers aren’t
just throwing a ball with it, they’re throwing balls harder
& with more spin than ever as a result. Four minor league
pitchers were suspended for doctoring balls last week, but
that same sort of discipline has yet to reach the big leagues.
Instead, accusations are running rampant about the guys who
are getting away with it.
Minnesota Twins star Josh Donaldson suggested that Yankees
ace Gerrit Cole’s spin rate dropped in a recent start in
the wake of the minor-league crackdown—implying that Cole
stopped using a foreign substance after it led to the
suspension of those players.
Cole, afterward, was asked if he had ever used Spider Tack
on the mound. He didn’t exactly deny it.
“I don’t quite know how to answer that, to be honest,” Cole
said, in an evasive, rambling answer that was widely mocked.
Despite the increasing uproar over the issue—and MLB’s
stance that it wants to remove it from the game—there’s
little evidence of that happening so far at the sport’s
highest level. In one incident earlier this season, umpires
forced Cardinals reliever Giovanny Gallegos to switch caps
because of a supposed substance that was observed on it.
Cards mgr Mike Shildt was so livid in the aftermath that he
got ejected from the game. He believed his player was being
unfairly singled out for something that’s simply commonplace
across the game.
“This is baseball’s dirty little secret,” Shildt said.
To James Deffinbaugh, it’s a surprise. But it’s no longer a
secret. He sees who has ordered Spider Tack. “They weren’t
hiding it,” he says.
And when teams place an order, they have him ship Spider Tack
directly to their stadiums. He declined to say which teams.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-is-spider-tack-mlb-gerrit-cole-foreign-substances-11623373319
By Andrew Beaton, 6/11/21, Wall St. Journal
James Deffinbaugh, who weighs 250 lbs & deadlifts 750 lbs,
recently noticed something curious about the niche grip-
enhancing product called Spider Tack that he invented
more than a decade ago.
The product was conceived to help hulking people like him
lift massive boulders into the air. But sales had suddenly
skyrocketed, & he was shipping the goop to new customers
in unexpected places.
“When the orders started to pick up, there were some orders
directly to teams,” Deffinbaugh says. “That’s how I realized
it was being used in baseball.”
That sticky stuff he created is now the center of a
burgeoning controversy in the sport. MLB said before the
season it planned to crack down on pitchers using foreign
substances that allow them to grip & throw the ball with
more spin.
Yet this year has been filled with speculation that pitchers
are doing that more than ever. Strikeouts are higher than
ever. Batting average is flirting with the lowest mark ever.
Hitters look helpless.
Pitchers doctoring baseballs is as old as peanut shells
littering the stands. But there are two things that are new.
The first is that modern tech can precisely measure how much
a ball spins, effectively quantifying the effect of a foreign
aid. The second is called Spider Tack.
It was designed for strongman competitions. It was popular
in wheelchair sports. Now it’s throwing baseball into chaos.
Michael Caruso & Deffinbaugh had no intention of creating
something pitchers would use to enhance their grips & alter
baseballs. They were weightlifting buddies. And back in 2009,
they were looking for some help lifting enormous rocks.
The hallmark event in competitions like the World’s Strongest
Man is called the Atlas Stones. The event is pretty much in
the name. Competitors need to lift &carry a series of stones,
which weigh hundreds of pounds, & place them on a platform.
The stones are round, & they don’t have handles—which means
gripping them is as difficult as lifting them.
Caruso &Deffinbaugh had tried plenty of substances, which
aren’t prohibited in their sport, to help them out in the
event. The ones they used were expensive & didn’t work
especially well. They set out to create a better one.
They weren’t just a couple of ordinary gym hounds who happened
to have a fantastical notion that they could chemically devise
a new product. Caruso has a Ph.D. in molecular biology, had
some background in chemistry & worked in a lab where he had
access to some instruments they needed. They developed a resin-
based substance & finally came up with something they loved.
“It’s the stickiest thing,” Caruso says. “It’s ridiculous.”
Spider Tack has an amber color, & Caruso compared its
viscosity to room-temp molasses. When you stick your finger
in a jar of it & start pulling away, it’s so sticky that it
wants to adhere to itself & creates webs of the stuff. Voila.
The webs gave it the name: Spider Tack.
They thought so much of this product that they initially
created just for themselves that they decided to try selling
it commercially in 2010. They also knew the market was limited.
Almost all of their small number of sales went to two distinct
communities where grip strength is paramount. One, as they
expected, was the strongman community. The other was a bit
more surprising: wheelchair sports, such as wheelchair racing
& wheel rugby, where competitors can’t have their hands slip.
Those markets were never big enough to make this much more
than a side hustle. Caruso retired from doing strongman
events. Deffinbaugh still competes & runs a gym in N Carolina.
“It’s always been a hobby business,” Deffinbaugh says. “It
was definitely nothing we could make a career off of.”
“Then,” he adds, “the last couple days, it’s been crazy.”
Recent days have seen a crescendo of allegations against
players believed to be using the stuff. They say it’s behind
why pitchers are dominating & batters are struggling.
“Pitchers are using a lot more substances now than they have
in the past,” Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto said recently.
There’s a reason pitchers have long surreptitiously used
foreign substances like pine tar. Such substances alter a
pitcher’s grip on the ball, & can even change the ball itself,
allowing them to make the best pitches in baseball even
better. Pitchers can make their sliders break more sharply.
They can make 4-seam fastballs more devastating.
As far as foreign substances go, Spider Tack is like
pine tar on steroids.
In one experiment, comparing the effect of using Spider
Tack to sunscreen & rosin, The Athletic found that a pitcher
gained over 500 RPMs on his fastball using Spider Tack. That
was the difference between a spin rate that was well below
average to one that was far above average.
Spider Tack is so sticky that its inventors can’t even
fathom how pitchers use it. “I don’t even know how they use
it to throw a ball,” Caruso says.
The prevailing notion surrounding MLB is that pitchers aren’t
just throwing a ball with it, they’re throwing balls harder
& with more spin than ever as a result. Four minor league
pitchers were suspended for doctoring balls last week, but
that same sort of discipline has yet to reach the big leagues.
Instead, accusations are running rampant about the guys who
are getting away with it.
Minnesota Twins star Josh Donaldson suggested that Yankees
ace Gerrit Cole’s spin rate dropped in a recent start in
the wake of the minor-league crackdown—implying that Cole
stopped using a foreign substance after it led to the
suspension of those players.
Cole, afterward, was asked if he had ever used Spider Tack
on the mound. He didn’t exactly deny it.
“I don’t quite know how to answer that, to be honest,” Cole
said, in an evasive, rambling answer that was widely mocked.
Despite the increasing uproar over the issue—and MLB’s
stance that it wants to remove it from the game—there’s
little evidence of that happening so far at the sport’s
highest level. In one incident earlier this season, umpires
forced Cardinals reliever Giovanny Gallegos to switch caps
because of a supposed substance that was observed on it.
Cards mgr Mike Shildt was so livid in the aftermath that he
got ejected from the game. He believed his player was being
unfairly singled out for something that’s simply commonplace
across the game.
“This is baseball’s dirty little secret,” Shildt said.
To James Deffinbaugh, it’s a surprise. But it’s no longer a
secret. He sees who has ordered Spider Tack. “They weren’t
hiding it,” he says.
And when teams place an order, they have him ship Spider Tack
directly to their stadiums. He declined to say which teams.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-is-spider-tack-mlb-gerrit-cole-foreign-substances-11623373319
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