JUICED BALL? PITCHERS SUSPICIOUS
Major League Baseball pitchers have spent this season trying to stay cool about it, keeping their angst to themselves, hoping it was just an anomaly.
Well, with the game’s home run surge getting more absurd by the day, with more homers being hit than at any time in baseball history, this proud pitching fraternity can no longer keep quiet.
Commissioner Rob Manfred, the Rawlings baseball manufacturers and any number of lab techs keep telling us the baseballs haven’t changed this season.
For those making a living throwing those same baseballs, something awfully strange is going on.
“One hundred percent,” Boston Red Sox pitcher David Price said. “We have all talked about it.”
No one is publicly accusing MLB of secretly juicing the baseballs, and testing is demonstrating that most players aren’t juicing their bodies. But the majority of pitchers interviewed by USA TODAY
Sports think the balls used this season have changed from a year ago.
“There’s a lot of people unhappy with the baseball, and I’m getting the same feedback,” New York Mets pitching coach Dan Warthen said. “You’re seeing guys going opposite field, breaking their bats, and the balls are flying out.
“It’s the balls. They’re throwing harder with it, but they’re getting less movement, so they’re just hanging there. There has got to be some investigation.”
The balls not only act differently when hit, the pitchers say, but they don’t feel the same as a year ago.
“There’s just something different about the baseballs,” Miami Marlins veteran reliever Brad Ziegler said. “I don’t have anything to quantify it, but the balls just don’t feel the same. It just feels different to me, a little harder, tighter than the past.
“I know there’s something legitimate about hitters going after certain launch angles and changing their approach, but, at the same time, you watch guys who have a lot of movement on their pitches, and those balls aren’t moving as much. And they’re being hit a long ways. Basically, it feels like every park is Colorado.”
Entering Friday, there had been 2,991 homers. At a rate of 2.52 per game, Major League Baseball is on pace to eclipse 6,000 homers, shattering the record.
That came at the height of the steroid era, when 5,693 homers— 2.34 per game — were hit in the 2000 season.
Baseball could surpass that by September, even though the major league fly ball has risen by less than 1% from 2016.
Entering Friday, 14 players had 20 or more homers, putting them on 40- homer paces for the season. A year ago, eight players hit 40 homers. Three years ago, Nelson Cruz was the only hitter with 40.
Dodger Stadium, long a pitcher’s paradise, is the ninth- best place to hit homers. Cavernous Target Field, which was the most difficult place to hit homers when it opened in 2010 in Minneapolis, is the fifth easiest this year. The only place harder to hit homers than in Oakland a year ago was across the Bay in San Francisco, but it has surrendered the 11th- most homers.
“It just feels like there’s been a lot of home runs being hit by guys who normally don’t hit them or by guys who normally don’t him them where they hit them,” Mets veteran reliever Jerry Blevins said. “I’ve seen so many home runs that just don’t look normal.”
The Mets gave up a franchise- record 15 homers in a four- game series to the Los Angeles Dodgers last week. It was the most homers in four games by the Dodgers in franchise history and the most by any team in the 55- year history of Dodger Stadium. Rookie Cody Bellinger, who led the National League with 24 homers despite not being called up until April 25, hit three home runs in a six atbat stretch against theMets.
“I’m staying away from my candid thoughts,” Tampa Bay Rays ace Chris Archer said. “But I know this for a fact: Triple- A balls travel 30 less feet than the major league ball, with the same exit velocity and launch angle. It’s wound differently in the minor leagues, which has an effect on your breaking ball, the movement of your fastball, with how the ball carries off the bat. … Bellinger, he didn’t showcase this kind of power ( in the minor leagues), because a fly ball to the warning track is now a homer.”
Bellinger averaged a home run every 15.4 at- bats over his final 477 minor league at- bats. Since his big- league debut, Bellinger is hitting a home run every 9.3 at- bats in the big leagues.
MLB says the balls are no different, and, while acknowledging surveys showing the popularity of home runs, Manfred dismisses conspiracy theories.
“As a quality- control effort, we routinely conduct in- season and offseason testing of baseballs in conjunction with our consultants at UMass- Lowell to ensure that they meet our specifications,” MLB said in a statement to USA TODAY Sports. “All recent test results have been within the specifications. In addition, we used a third- party consultant ( Alan Nathan) to test whether the baseball had any impact on offense in recent years, and he found no evidence of that.”
It contradicts studies by The Ringer which discovered that baseballs — since roughly the 2015 All- Star break — have become smaller with lower seams, resulting in the power surge.
“The seams are different and the balls are a lot harder,” Mets manager Terry Collins said. “I remember on Father’s Day, a ball got fouled back into the dugout, and Dan Warthen came over and said, ‘ Feel this ball.’
“It was as hard a ball as I’ve ever felt. And with these seams different, you’re seeing guys getting more blisters.”
Price, who has been struggling with blister and cracked nail problems this season, might be Exhibit A.
“Absolutely,” he said. “Never have I ever gotten a blister on my ring finger. I had a huge one. And now that’s gone, I have a cracked nail onmy middle finger.”
San Francisco Giants ace Johnny Cueto is hesitant to blame this year’s baseballs, but he acknowledged this was the first time in his career that he had had blisters on the index finger and middle finger of his pitching hand.
“There’s not much of a seam on the ball anymore,” Detroit Tigers ace Justin Verlander recently told the Detroit Free Press. “When you got up to the big leagues, if you picked up a minor league ball to a big- league ball, the seams were always wound tighter, just a little smaller. It was noticeable, but now you look at the ball and try to look at it from the side, there isn’t one. There is no seam.”
Washington Nationals pitching coach Mike Maddux says he hasn’t noticed a change in baseballs by the touch, but when they’re hit he sees the difference.
“You just sit there and scratch your head,” he said.
There have been 26 homers that have traveled at least 460 feet this season.
“I think the old eye test is the best thing to go by,” Verlander said. “You see balls leaving the yard that otherwise shouldn’t.”
Predictably, hitters are less bullish on the juiced- ball theory, citing superior conditioning, a greater emphasis on going all- in on power and, to a far lesser extent, the advent of advanced data such as launch angles and exit velocity.
“As hitters, we all know the strikeout rate is increasing,” Pittsburgh Pirates second baseman Josh Harrison said. “So if that’s going to increase, something else has to increase for us.”
So, too, are pitchers’ ERA — 4.31 overall, the highest since 2007.
“Baseball has talked a long time about getting offense in the game,” Marlins reliever David Phelps said. “So whether it’s us pitchers struggling or the hitters doing a better job of driving the ball out of the ballpark, it’s happened. They’re probably not too upset about it.
“But we, as pitchers, just want answers. We want to know what changed, because there’s definitely a difference with the way balls are flying out of the ballpark.”