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USA Today Sports Media Group
USA Today Sports Media Group
Sport
Andrew Joseph

Dodgers pitcher Michael Grove had a rough inning right after the umpires made him change his pants

Michael Grove Dodgers the Blue Jays Blue Jays

There is nothing quite like the paranoia you see from baseball teams at the slightest suspicion of a pitcher using illegal substances. It apparently can lead to a clothing change.

During Monday night’s game between the Dodgers and Blue Jays, Los Angeles starter Michael Grove was cruising through four innings. In those innings, he had allowed just four hits, no runs and racked up six strikeouts. It had all the makings of a deep outing, but the Blue Jays noticed something was up with Grove’s right pant leg.

There was a noticeable dark spot around the thigh, and Grove was seen going to that leg with his throwing hard between pitches.

That raised some obvious alarms about sticky substances, and the Blue Jays evidently voiced those concerns to Jeff Nelson and the umpiring crew. When Grove returned to the mound in the fifth inning, the dark spot on the pants was gone. It was clear: Grove had changed his pants between innings.

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Now, the umpires did their customary check for sticky substances on Grove, and if they found anything out of the ordinary, Grove should have been ejected. But we’ve seen umpires circumvent those rules and give pitchers an opportunity to wash their hands instead of an automatic ejection as required. Grove said that the umpires told him the request to have his pants checked came from the Blue Jays dugout.

Whether it was gamesmanship from the Blue Jays or a genuine concern, Grove was clearly not as sharp in the fifth inning. He gave up two runs and four hits with the new pants in the fifth inning before getting pulled from the game.

Fans understandably had thoughts on the whole ordeal, including more inconsistency with how umpires enforce the rules on sticky substances.

This was how Twitter reacted

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