Outside The Confines: The sticky subject of foreign substances

Greetings from Canada, where it is a holiday today, but that isn’t keeping me from putting together a Monday links post for you today. Bonus points to anyone in the comments who knows WHAT Canadian holiday it is today without Googling it first. There’s no prize, but enjoy your sweet, sweet internet points if you know the answer.

The two biggest stories of the past few days, without a doubt, seem to be the great debate over whether or not no-hitters are ruining baseball (let’s get in a time machine and go back two years and ask our past selves if we ever thought THAT sentence would come up), and whether pitchers are still using foreign substances while throwing.

In terms of the abundance of no-hitters, we have quite a few posts on the topic.

• Molly Knight shares the opinions of players and managers in regards to how different the game feels this year with offense dwindling. (The Athletic subscription required.)
• Clayton Kershaw believes that the spate of no-hitters is “not good for the game” according to Michael Shapiro.
• Emma Baccellieri digs into the 1917 season, one of the last times MLB saw this many no-hitters.
• Ben Clemens looks specifically at the Kluber no-hitter.

Al will have a look at all the no-hitters coming up at noon CT today.

And a surprising number of writers debating the foreign substance discussion.

• Ken Rosenthal and Brittany Ghiroli look into the concerns of players around MLB regarding the use of sticky substances. (The Athletic subscription required.)
• Alden Gonzalez looks at why it’s so important that MLB cracks down on the use of these substances.

Now on to the rest of the links!

• Willy Adames has been traded to the Milwaukee Brewers, but the Rays haven’t yet called up the hottest prospect in baseball, Wander Franco. Keith Law dives into why the Rays are sitting on their next wunderkind. (The Athletic subscription required.)
• Speaking of Wander Franco, one of his signed cards just went for $200,000, which is nuts. Story by Tyler Maun.
• In fun things that seem to be much rarer than no-hitters lately, the Yankees turned a triple play, as shared by Max Goodman.
• Devan Fink digs into the impact of foul balls in terms of what they mean for strikeouts.
• Zach Buchanan looks at the unique difficulty of constructing a roster for minor league teams who have lost their MLB affiliation. (The Athletic subscription required.)
• Scott Ostler looks at the A’s future in Oakland, according to team president Dave Kaval.
• On the subject of Howard Terminal, Annie Sciacca has a handy breakdown of who would pay for what in the new stadium deal.
• The precocious kid who was NOT pleased with Mike Trout being hit by a pitch has earned himself a fun reward for his devotion.

• Ryan McGee reflects on the greatest game of college baseball ever played, forty years later.
• This one is fun. Joon Lee spotlights how umpires are stepping up their shoe game (pun very intended.)
• Will Leitch brings us one cool thing about every MLB park.
• Jake Mailhot explores the maturation and development of Harrison Bader.
• Jim Allen writes in-depth about runners failing to make plays when they take off from second.
• MLB saw its 20,000th player debut this past week, so enjoy this little compilation on the history of just some of those 20,000 players.

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster. Make it so.