Deadened baseball might affect Biggio the most
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Chicks dig the long ball. Or, at least they used to. After decades of doing everything it could to sell fans on the allure of home runs, Major League Baseball apparently has decided there can be too much of a good thing. You’ve heard about the juiced ball era, now get ready for deadened baseballs.
There was a time when power was all MLB cared about. In the late 1990s, Nike, in conjunction with MLB, turned the home-run race between Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa into a tongue-in-cheek campaign about Cy Young winners Greg Maddux and Tom Glavine hitting the gym because they were tired of the game’s biggest sluggers stealing all the attention from the opposite sex.
Throughout most of the 2000s, Barry Bonds was the face of the sport, even if it wasn’t always for the right reasons. More recently, teams started emphasizing launch angle and exit velocities while trying to maximize the pop out of their hitters. By 2019, there were a record high 6,776 home runs, with a rate that fell just 0.1 per cent last year.
The spike in homers began in 2017, which is around the same time pitchers started sounding the alarm about the baseballs. MLB initially denied claims that the balls had been altered and were travelling farther as a result, but it eventually commissioned four scientists who determined the 2019 baseball had less drag than previous seasons. The study, according to The Associated Press, blamed the difference on inconsistent seam heights.
The Athletic reported earlier this month that Rawlings has designed a new baseball for the upcoming season, loosening the tension on the first of three wool windings and dropping the overall weight by 2.8 grams. The changes are expected to have a minor effect, with MLB suggesting the balls will travel one to two feet shorter on balls hit 375 feet or more.
The difference might not seem like much and it’s unlikely to have a big impact on sluggers like Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Judge or even Teoscar Hernandez. No-doubt home runs are still going to clear the fence easily. They might hit the facing of the second deck instead of going a few rows deeper.
One doesn’t have to be a physicist to understand it’s the lower-level power guys who are most at risk, the guys who frequently see fly balls carry just over the wall. The Blue Jays have one of those in Cavan Biggio, and he likely will find these changes harder to deal with than most.
Among qualified hitters last season, Biggio was tied for the eighth-lowest average homerun distance in the majors at 379 feet. The next closest Jay was Randal Grichuk, who tied for 33rd at 393 feet. Per Baseball Savant, only one of Biggio’s homers was considered a nodoubter while four of his other seven were deemed “doubters,” which means they would have gone out in seven or fewer ballparks.
The story was similar in 2019. Among players with at least 200 batted ball events, Biggio led only Brandon Drury on the Jays with an average home-run distance of 393 feet. The Notre Dame product had eight homers that fell into the nodoubter category and 10 that were considered doubters. For his career, Biggio has 24 home runs, while advanced stats suggest that number should be 3.7 lower, with an xHR of 20.3.
The league’s home-run rate will be worth monitoring throughout the year to see how much of an impact the new baseballs will have, but Biggio doesn’t expect too many changes. He spent the offseason working on things like his two-strike approach instead and will wait to get real data before deciding on anything drastic.
“Anything more that you try to do is probably going to impact someone negatively, either in the swing or mechanics,” said Biggio, who hit .250 with a .375 on-base percentage last season. “I think the biggest thing for me is the same thing, putting the ball in play, putting a good swing on it and squaring up the ball. If I find myself trying to do too much, things get out of whack and out of sync and I’m not a very good hitter when that happens.”
One thing working in Biggio’s favour, and something that could offset the changes to the baseball, is the Jays’ new home ballpark. The club is set to open the year at TD Ballpark in Dunedin, Fla., which is considered favourable to left-handed hitters. The power alley in right-centre field is 21 feet shorter than the one found in left-centre, the foul pole in right is one foot closer, and when the wind is blowing out to right, as it often does, a lot of balls leave the park.
Biggio has only been in the majors for parts of two seasons and he is already one of the most mature and level-headed players the Jays have. He exceeded expectations at every level by continuously adjusting, and if a lot of his fly balls start landing at the warning track instead of leaving the park, it probably wouldn’t be wise to bet against him overcoming those odds as well. He may struggle to become the regular 20-plus-homer hitter some have expected, but a ballplayer this intelligent is going to find ways to contribute.
GOING, GOING