Houston Astros catcher Martin Maldonado used an illegal bat in Game 1 of the World Series on Friday, which was gifted to him by Albert Pujols – a model that the future Hall of Famer was allowed to use because he was grandfathered in. On the other hand, some also noted that MLB's 2010 rule change was basically to outlaw low-density maple bats because they kept shattering ( one player was infamously impaled by a shard during a game that year), though the league also decreased the maximum circumference from 2.75 inches to 2.61 inches, as Verducci reported.Watch Video: Is the World Series still relevant in a world dominated by the NFL? The Astros' cheating scandal leaves little room for nuance for most fans, though, so the Maldonado revelation awakened a lot of ire still directed at the team.

Of course, it should go without saying there is a difference between a group of players making a conscious decision to use a camera feed to illegally relay pitch signals in real time all the way to a now-tainted World Series and one player using the wrong bat for one game his team lost. So Albert Pujols could use that bat but Maldonado, who began his major league career in 2011, was not legally able to use that bat.'Īwkward, given the Astros' recent history in the World Series. 'In 2010, Major League Baseball changed the bat specifications and that bat that Pujols modeled was no longer legal, except if you were playing prior to 2010 it was grandfathered in.

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