Umpire Phil Cuzzi, who ejected Max Scherzer, has prior glove drama

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History has repeated itself at Dodger Stadium.

Umpire Phil Cuzzi ejected Max Scherzer before the fourth inning of the Mets’ 5-3 win over the Dodgers on Wednesday in Los Angeles, on suspicion of using sticky substances.

Scherzer was emphatic after the game that his hand was sticky only from the combination of sweat and rosin.

Cuzzi, 67, has been at the center of a similar controversy before.

In 2021, Cuzzi ejected then-Mariners pitcher Hector Santiago for what was the first violation of the MLB’s crackdown on sticky substances, and later that season he ejected then-Diamondbacks pitcher Caleb Smith due to a sticky substance.

As with Scherzer, Santiago was adamant that he had been unfairly victimized for using rosin.

“[Umpire Phil Cuzzi] said he felt some sticky stuff on the inside of the glove,” Santiago said after the game. “All I used was rosin. I used it on both sides, trying to keep that sweat from dripping down to the hands.”

Mariners manager Scott Servais defended his pitcher at the time.

“It’s about 85-90 percent humidity [Sunday],” Servais said at the time. “He had rosin all over himself. When you put rosin on sweat, it gets sticky.”

Crew chief Tom Hallion said after the game that the four umpires on the field were in unanimous agreement that Santiago had been using a banned substance.

“What we do is we go around the whole glove, feeling for anything that would be sticky or something,” Hallion said. “It was very noticeable, and then the rest of the crew inspected to make sure we were all in agreement. All four agreed that it was a sticky substance, and that’s why he was ejected.”

Smith said after his August 2021 ejection that his removal was “bulls–t,” and he was later suspended 10 games.

Cuzzi found a sticky substance after checking Smith’s glove.

“There were two darker areas of the glove, one on the left side, one on the right side of the heel,” Hallion told a pool reporter at the time. “We touched those, kind of went around the glove to see if there was any other place that had anything. There were the two spots that were a foreign substance that had a sticky feel to it. It was on the leather lacing at the heel of the glove, also.”

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Santiago received an automatic 10-game suspension for the infraction, which is the same fate presumably awaiting Scherzer, who was asked to change his glove following an initial check on Wednesday.

“MLB standards and rules enforcement should mandate and require an objective verifiable standard,” Scherzer’s agent, Scott Boras, said in a statement to The Post’s Joel Sherman. “If you want to attack the integrity of the competition you need clear precise standards else you damage the game and it players. The Cuzzi on field spectrometer is not the answer. MLB needs to employ available scientific methods (not subjective) to create verifiable certainly of it rules.”

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