Bauer wants sticky substances made legal: 'Over 69 percent' of MLB uses them

The way Trevor Bauer sees it, Major League Baseball has a foreign substance problem. So, the Cleveland Indians starter has a simple solution: Allow it.

After publicly hypothesizing that the Houston Astros were systematically improving the spin rate of their pitches by improving their grip on the baseball with an illegal substance, the argument got heated with Astros players calling Bauer by the wrong first name, as well as "jealous." Houston manager A.J. Hinch even commented on the feud, stating that Bauer should worry less about what other teams are doing and focus on himself.

On Wednesday, Bauer made a full statement regarding the quarrel:

"I have no problem with any organization in the league. None," Bauer said, according to Ryan Lewis of Ohio.com. "Regarding the Astros. I think they do a great job of player development. I have no accusations against them at all. I've never made any. And I'm not accusing them of cheating. That being said. There is a problem in baseball right now that has to do with sticky substances and spin rates."

Bauer went on to compare the use of sticky substances by some pitchers to the steroid era, stating "if you just look the other way and you let some people do it, the people who chose not to do it are at a competitive disadvantage."

So, Bauer contends, "Allow it. I don't see that there's a way to enforce it. Because you can't go check a pitcher every single inning, every single pitch ... You can get thrown out of a game and suspended if an umpire comes out and checks and finds out. But it doesn't happen. So, pick a substance that's sticky, that gives you all the performance benefits and just put it on the back of the mound."

"And that way, when I want to use surgical grade stuff on my stitches on the backside of my pinky that's never going to touch the ball and has no effect on the game at all, I can use it and not be thrown out of the game or whatever." Bauer continued, clearly alluding to the time he sliced his finger open while performing maintenance on his drone prior to Game 3 of the 2016 American League Championship Series against the Toronto Blue Jays.

In typical Bauer fashion, the right-hander added that "Over 69 percent of the league probably uses it anyways ... just make it legal."

Bauer famously launched a charity campaign called "The 69 Days of Giving," in which he will be donating $420.69 of his salary for 68 straight days. In total, by the end, Bauer will have donated enough to make his 2018 salary $6,420,969.69.

"If I say I'm giving $100,000 to charity, everybody will be like, 'Oh, that's cool,'" Bauer said in an interview with Jerry Crasnick of ESPN. "As soon as I attack obnoxious numbers like 69 and 420 to it, and I say in an article that I'm doing it to troll the establishment or whatever, now people latch on to it because they're like, 'That's funny.'"