Joe Musgrove has ears checked by umpires for substance during Mets-Padres

Mets Manager Buck Showalter requested the umpiring team to try the San Diego starter’s ears, prompting a long extend whilst there was once a convention at the mound. After a dialogue and a rubbing of his ears, Musgrove remained within the recreation.

After the sport, a 6-0 Padres win at New York’s Citi Field that despatched them on to stand the rival Los Angeles Dodgers in a National League Division Series showdown, Musgrove stated he’d noticed Showalter ask for identical tests on combatants prior to now.

“I mean, I get it, dude, they were on their last leg, they’re desperate, they’re doing everything they can to get me out of the game at that point,” the 29-year-old starter told an ESPN reporter. “I mean, it is what it is.”

After making plans to make some noise, the Mets cross quietly into the offseason

Of the ear-cupping gesture he made towards the Mets’ dugout after he was once lifted from the sport following seven innings of one-hit ball, Musgrove stated: “It motivated me a little bit, it fired me up. I had been throwing the ball well all night, and they were doing everything they could to get me out of there. So an opportunity to stick it to them a little bit and stick it to the crowd, I took it and then I had to get back to work.”

Leading as much as the ear-check collection was once a considerable amount of on-line chatter, after a picture taken from the telecast perceived to display Musgrove with noticeably glossy ears. He was once noticed rubbing his proper ear between pitches.

Images of Musgrove’s reputedly glossy ears had precipitated hypothesis that he could be the use of a substance similar to Vaseline, which will assist impart much less spin and most likely extra motion to pitches.

Weighing in on Twitter, Milwaukee Brewers outfielder Andrew McCutchen opined that Musgrove would possibly have implemented to his ears a logo of ointment used to regard muscle soreness and joint ache. The 14-year veteran added that he was once no longer accusing Musgrove of dishonest.

“Pitchers use it as mechanism to stay locked in during games,” McCutchen wrote during the sport. “It burns like crazy and [I don’t know] why some guys thinks it helps them but in no way is it ‘sticky.’ Buck is smart tho. Could be trying to just throw him off.”

San Diego gained the primary recreation of the best-of-three sequence, 7-1, sooner than the Mets stayed alive Saturday with a 7-3 victory.

In his 7th main league season, Musgrove entered Sunday’s recreation 0-5 as a starter towards the Mets in his profession, with a 5.83 ERA in six overall appearances vs. New York.

Amid a raucous postgame party within the guests’ clubhouse, San Diego’s Manny Machado advised Musgrove (by means of MLB.com), “Hey Joe, I got that sticky stuff right here.”

Machado proceeded to pour champagne at the pitcher’s head.