Astros pitcher Ronel Blanco suspended 10 games for foreign substance in glove

Houston Astros pitcher Ronel Blanco received a 10-game suspension from MLB on Wednesday, a day after umpires found a foreign substance in his glove during a game against the Oakland Athletics, officials said.

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Third-base umpire Laz Diaz ejected Blanco before the start of the fourth inning of Tuesday’s game, ESPN reported. His glove was confiscated and was sent to the commissioner’s office.

“I felt something inside the glove,” first-base umpire Erich Bacchus told a pool reporter after the game. “It was the stickiest stuff I’ve felt on a glove since we’ve been doing this for a few years now.”

Blanco, 30, had struck out four and walked one in three innings during Tuesday’s game, according to Baseball-Reference.com . He is in his third season in the majors and has a 4-0 record.

Blanco pitched a no-hitter against the Toronto Blue Jays in his 2024 debut on April 1. The Astros were leading 1-0 on Tuesday when Blanco was replaced by Tayler Scott, ESPN reported.

Astros general manager Dana Brown said Blanco will not appeal the suspension, the Houston Chronicle reported. Of the previous five pitchers suspended for using a foreign substance since the MLB’s crackdown began in June 2021, there have been only two appeals, according to the newspaper. Both were denied.

The suspension began with Wednesday’s game in Houston.

Blanco said he believed the sticky substance found in his glove was due to rosin that had run down his left arm and mixed with his sweat, an opinion that Astros manager Joe Espada agreed with, the Chronicle reported.

“He said it was just rosin, and we told him: ‘This is not rosin,’” Diaz told the pool reporter.

According to the Chronicle , MLB’s Rule 6.02(d) includes a comment that states: “A pitcher may use the rosin bag for the purpose of applying rosin to his bare hand or hands. Neither the pitcher nor any other player shall dust the ball with the rosin bag; neither shall the pitcher nor any other player be permitted to apply rosin from the bag to his glove or dust any part of his uniform with the rosin bag.”

In a radio interview before Wednesday’s game, Brown said the team will wait for the result of MLB’s investigation, the Chronicle reported.

“They made a judgment call as to the stickiness,” Brown told the team’s flagship radio station. “I think if you get a pitcher who sweats a lot, you got a rosin bag, and you have the cowhide, which is what the glove’s made of, you may think it’s sticky. So we’ll find out once MLB conducts their investigation.

“But we welcome these investigations. We don’t want guys out there cheating or using sticky substance or anything like that. So we welcome that. We don’t want anyone to have any more advantage than we have.”