Major League Baseball is in a sticky situation.

And I don’t mean pitchers channelling their inner MacGyver and whipping up creative concoctions to improve their grip and spin rates.

The sticky situation is the product on the field itself.

It’s bad.

Really bad.

It’s boring.

Really, really boring.

The problems go beyond the yawns on the diamond, too. It goes to the foundation of the sport itself.

Of course, everyone wants to talk about the “sticky stuff” because it’s scandalous.

Pitcher’s doctoring baseballs? Since when?

Well, since the beginning of time.

This kind of thing has been going on for years. Pitcher Trevor Bauer said as much last season.

But with batting averages plunging, strikeouts rising and games becoming so long and tedious it’s testing the patience of even the most ardent fans, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred had to step in and do something.

It’s the wrong something, however, and definitely at the wrong time.

If you are going to enforce a rule that is already on the books about foreign substances applied to baseballs, do it from the start of the season, not almost halfway through it.

This problem didn’t exactly sneak up on the league.

It has been a great source of comic relief.

Washington Nationals pitcher Max Scherzer nearly stripped down to his skivvies when inspected by umpires Tuesday night.

Scherzer was searched three times during the game and sounded off on the situation.

“What we’re doing right now,” he said, “this is not the answer.”

It’s not.

The problem isn’t even in the top 10 of problems with the MLB right now.

The biggest problem is competitive balance. It’s been an issue for years, but it’s even more urgent now.

A quarter of the teams in the league aren’t trying to win. That’s an alarming number.

The Pittsburgh Pirates are one of them. Look at their lineup on a daily basis. That should be proof enough they are tanking.

Bob Nutting’s reputation as a cheapskate is well deserved. But while Nutting deserves a fair share of the blame for the lowly product he is putting on the field, it’s the system that allows it to happen that is the biggest culprit.

MLB is the only major sports circuit without a salary cap or floor and it shows.

When one team in your league can have a payroll 10 times higher than another, there are going to be serious problems with your product.

As long as that kind of disparity exists, teams like the Pirates will never consistently win.

Or win at all.

A lot has been made of the Pirates jettisoning their stars — or even future stars — for prospects years and years away from the Big Leagues.

It’s the cruel reality of MLB, though.

For comparison’s sake, what if the NFL had no salary cap?

Do you think the Pittsburgh Steelers would have been able to keep Ben Roethlisberger, Markese Pouncey and Cameron Heyward for all those years?

Do you think without a salary cap the Steelers could afford to keep T.J. Watt?

They would have been traded long ago.

The Pirates would have loved to keep their stars. They would have preferred to hold on to guys like Gerrit Cole, but the structure of the sport doesn’t allow that.

Direct your ire at the system, not the symptoms of that system.

Until there is a cap, the Pirates are going to lose. A lot. They may have small windows of time when they are good, but it’s unsustainable.

No amount of sticky stuff can fix that.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle