David Cone Perfectly Displays Effects of Rosin During ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ Experiment

The 10-game suspension handed to Mets ace Max Scherzer has sparked plenty of discussion over the use of foreign substances—even legal ones—by pitchers in MLB.

During New York’s clash against the Giants on Sunday Night Baseball, ESPN analyst David Cone conducted an experiment in which he perfectly displayed how rosin can impact a pitcher’s grip. 

Cone gave fans a visual representation of the effect rosin has on a pitcher’s hand, and then added alcohol to the mix to depict the difference. He could be seen gripping the rock rosin before attempting to clean his hands with alcohol. He then tried to grip the ball after using the alcohol—and the results were glaring.

“Even with just the rock rosin, it got sticky,” said Cone before cleaning his hands with alcohol. “The alcohol sort of activates the rest of the rosin,” he explained. 

After washing his hands with alcohol, Cone was able to hold the ball up simply by applying some pressure onto it with his index finger. He even suggested there was some difficulty in un-sticking his fingers when he pressed them together. 

MLB Crew Chief Dan Bellino said that Scherzer’s hand was “far stickier than anything we’ve felt” at the time of his ejection. Scherzer said he washed his hands with alcohol in front of league officials in between innings on Wednesday.

As Cone’s experiment indicated, the presence of alcohol combined with rosin resulted in his hand getting significantly stickier than with the rock rosin alone.