Even this former Braves pitcher is defending Edwin Diaz

I may not know much, but what I do know is that when it comes to the New York Mets and the Atlanta Braves, the best thing you can do is take some advice from Ghostbusters and don't cross the streams.

The Mets and Braves are oil and water, and longtime NL East rivals, even if you can't exactly call it a rivalry because the Braves have dominated the matchup for over three decades. Mets fans and Braves fans don't like each other, and you don't typically even see the players acting buddy-buddy off the field either (for reference, please see perpetual Mets tormentor Chipper Jones naming his daughter Shea, because he always killed the Mets at Shea Stadium, or Mets fans refusing to call him Chipper and instead serenading him with chants of his given name, Larry, at every opportunity.)

It's a rare occasion indeed when the Mets and Braves are on the same page when it comes to anything, but how does the saying go? "The enemy of my enemy is my friend," and the Mets, Braves, and every other team in baseball currently share a common foe: Major League Baseball itself.

Rob Manfred is not a well-loved commissioner, partially because he says tone-deaf things like orphaned A's fans should just root for the Giants, but mainly because many of his policies seem to come from someone that doesn't actually know baseball. Take the extra-inning ghost-runner rule as something that nobody asked for, yet everyone has to deal with.

Major League Baseball's recent rule changes have mostly been short-sighted

The pitch clock, another Manfred-era rule change, has been an extremely popular addition, while opinions vary on the universal DH and other Manfred moves. One rule that most fans and players seem to mostly agree on, though, is that the rule barring pitchers from using "sticky stuff" is a bad one, or at the very least, it's poorly implemented.

Edwin Diaz, former All-Star closer for the Mets, became the seventh major leaguer to be ejected from a game for using sticky stuff when he came in to close out a game against the Cubs last night. That ejection comes with a mandatory 10-game suspension, which puts a damper on the Mets' recent Grimace-fueled hot streak that has seen them climb back into the Wild Card race.

The Mets have been abnormally effected by the sticky stuff ban, as three of the seven aforementioned ejections and suspensions were handed to their players. That means that three Mets have been ejected, compared to four players from MLB's other 29 teams, a truly ludicrous ratio.

Are the Mets just a bunch of cheaters? That doesn't track, especially as we've seen many times around the league where a pitcher was found to have hands that were too sticky, and instead of being ejected, was made to wash their hands and then allowed to return to the game. Even if the Mets were serial rule-breakers, baseball made it clear with its slap-on-the-wrist penalty of the garbage can-thumping Astros that when it came to enforcing fair play, Manfred was toothless. Besides, if the Mets were cheating so regularly, you'd hope they'd be better than the mediocre team they've mostly been since MLB upped its enforcement against sticky stuff three years ago.

Former Braves pitcher Peter Moylan took to X (formerly Twitter) this morning to repost a TV segment he did shortly after the sticky stuff ban went into effect, and it's a reminder that Major League Baseball, like Angel Hernandez visiting Redwood National Park, can't see the forest for the trees when it comes to enacting rule changes that help the game.

A former Braves pitcher defending a current Mets pitcher is a clear sign that MLB's sticky stuff rule needs fixing

Moylan isn't advocating for pitchers to be able to use whatever they want to increase their grip. If you watch the video, he makes it clear that substances like Spider Tack that enhance a pitcher's spin rate and essentially turn him into "a different pitcher" should be illegal, but he also says that MLB lacks consistency with how they rub up the baseballs. He directly traces that inconsistency, and the difficulty it causes for pitchers in gripping the ball, with arm injuries.

Sure enough, we've seen a huge rise in elbow injuries and Tommy John surgeries since the sticky stuff ban was implemented, enough that it's fair to call it a crisis that MLB desperately needs to address.

Edwin Diaz missed all of last year with a freak leg injury, and by going a little heavy on the sweat and rosin, he's trying to protect his arm from the rash of injuries that have befallen many of his colleagues. To bring it back to Ghostbusters, Bill Murray's character, Peter Venkman, in trying to convince the mayor of New York City that he needs to free them to stop the ghosts that have been loosed upon the world, yells, "Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria!"

Was Venkman talking about the Mets and the Braves agreeing on something? Because it sure seems like it. The mayor eventually did allow Venkman and his cohorts to save the day after being reminded that he could wrap up re-election if the Ghostbusters rescued the city under his watch.

Manfred announced earlier that this year that he'll be retiring in 2029 when his current term ends, and you would think he'd like to leave a legacy of protecting the game and MLB's players before he calls it a career. Helping to stop the epidemic of arm injuries by making common-sense changes to the sticky stuff rule is a good place to start.