Earlier this season, in this space, my frustration with the incursion of analytics into baseball telecasts boiled over.

However, I’ve actually gotten used to “exit velocity” (“velo” to broadcasters) — the speed at which a baseball leaves the bat — but, sorry, I can’t get worked up that a player who’s hitting a buck-eighty is actually batting .306 against curveballs after the seventh inning.

But now a new statistic — thanks to technology — has overtaken the major leagues with very real consequences … and controversy.

Before this season, we heard little, if anything, about “spin rate.” It’s how often a baseball rotates from the time it leaves the pitcher’s hand until it crosses the plate. Supposedly, the more “spin,”  the harder the pitch is to hit. And, apparently, that rate can be enhanced if a ball is thrown by fingers coated with a sticky (read: illegal) substance.

Much to my amazement, there’s a device which can now measure “spin rate” and those findings seemingly provided a clue to MLB why current batting averages are abysmal (only 5 .300 hitters in the National League; 7 in the AL).

Indeed, two months into the season, the collective major league batting average — .236 — was on pace for the lowest in history.

HENCE  the Commissioner’s Office decreed that pitchers caught by umpires using illegal substances would face suspension.

The rule states: “No player shall intentionally discolor or damage the ball by rubbing it with soil, rosin, paraffin, licorice, sand-paper, emery-paper or other foreign substance.”

Umpires remove offenders from the game and the league will impose a 10-game suspension.

MLB let teams know before this season that it would try to assess the effects of foreign substances on pitches. Guidelines were finally announced on June 15 and went into effect six days later.

Previously, enforcement of the rule was mostly left up to managers, who could ask the umpire to check an opposing pitcher for a violation. Under the new guidelines, umpires enforce the rule without being asked.

Starting pitchers have more than one mandatory check per game and each relief pitcher must be checked either at the conclusion of the inning he entered the game or when he is removed. Inspections are conducted between innings or after pitching changes to avoid a delay of the game and to allow the umpire to perform a check of the pitcher’s hat, glove and fingertips.

Umpires may perform a check at any time during the game when they notice the ball has an unusually sticky feel to it, or when they observe a pitcher going to his glove, hat, belt or any part of his uniform or body to retrieve or apply what may be a foreign substance.

Catchers are also subject to routine inspections.

A player who refuses to cooperate with an inspection is presumed to have violated the rules and will be ejected from the game and suspended.

THE NEW decree created an instant pair of poster pitchers, the Yankees’ Gerrit Cole and Dodgers’ Trevor Bauer, both of them among MLB’s best, and each of whom had a reported dramatic drop in spin rate this month.

Thus, during ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball game between the Dodgers and Cubs in Los Angeles, Bauer, who has long campaigned for pitchers to have some legal substance approved to improve grip, did an in-game interview.

Happily, ESPN announcers Matt Vasgersian, Alex Rodriguez and Buster Olney asked questions and didn’t interrupt his answers, which were delivered during a complete half inning.

Bauer, who some joke as having a doctorate in knowing how sticky substances work, explained, “It keeps the ball stuck to your fingers longer so that you can actually apply the force in a way that’s tangential to the surface of the ball, which increases spin as opposed to putting force directly to the center of the ball which is gonna give you more linear velocity but not as much spin.”

Last year’s NL Cy Young Award winner when with Cincinnati, added “It’s unclear whether the majority of the spin rate increase comes from the position that it allows you to get to, or the increased friction on the ball, or a combination of both, but that’s really where the performance enhancement comes from.”

PREVIOUSLY, Bauer had criticized baseball for the new policy, calling it “a mess.”

“MLB was telling players and teams all year, do not change anything, we’re not going to enforce it this year. And now, all of a sudden, everything is changing,” he said in an interview with Sportsnet Los Angeles. “They haven’t thought through a lot of these things, and they’re making umpires the judge, jury, and executioner.”

Bauer added in a tweet, “They didn’t get a whole lot about this right.

“The best analogy for this is you basically have people who have never seen traffic before and have no radar guns, and you tell them, ‘Hey, you have to tell who’s speeding and who’s not.’”

He continued, with more than a trace of bitterness, “They’ve knowingly swept this under the rug for four years. Now they implement a knee jerk reaction to shifting public perception.

“Hard to hear them talk about ‘competitive integrity’ when they have no integrity to begin with.” 

(Chuck Pollock, an Olean Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)