Umpires Will Keep Their Eye on Jake Peavy

The "what's on Jake Peavy's hand?" mini-controversy didn't really spill over into the work week, meaning a lot of baseball fans unplugged from the internet from Friday evening through Monday morning didn't even realize it happened. And that's fine, because really, this was much ado about nothing.

Of course, Major League Baseball had to do something about the half-hearted allegations made by Joe Torre and the Dodgers, so on Monday Bob Watson called Padres GM Kevin Towers and told him umpires will pay special attention to Peavy's throwing hand in future starts but stopped far short of launching an actual investigation. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:

The commissioner's office is aware of a photograph showing a dark substance on the forefinger, middle finger and thumb of Peavy's pitching hand, shortly after Peavy threw a two-hitter against the Dodgers on Saturday. The phone call from Watson, according to a major league official, didn't reflect anything "untoward" on Peavy's part but was a "general reinforcement" of rules forbidding a pitcher's use of substances such as pine tar.

In hindsight, I find the timing of this whole non-story to be a little funny: it was almost a year to the day after Francisco Rodriguez faced similar accusations last year after he was spotted by a blogger going to his hat early and often. The problem then, just like now, is that no one raised any objections until after the fact, so it's all just a bunch of finger-pointing and he-said/she-said without actual proof anyone was doing anything against the rules.