MLB will probe bats as part of HR surge

MIAMI — Gotta be the … bats?

Baseball’s home-run craze has commissioner Rob Manfred investigating every component of the recipe in order to make sense of what we’re seeing. And though the notion of a juiced ball has garnered the most attention, the bat remains an item of interest, too.

“One thing that we’re thinking about is bats,” Manfred said Tuesday, as he met with the Baseball Writers Association of America in a downtown hotel. “We’ve kind of taken for granted that bats aren’t different. We’re starting to look at the issue of bats.”

Manfred maintained his stance that, despite myriad baseball people contending the ball is different, the baseballs fall within the range of acceptability. The commissioner did acknowledge that range’s width, and said there could be a tweak to that.

Players Association executive director Tony Clark, who addressed the same group, said, “We’re focused right now on the balls. … But in the event that we have to look at the bat again, we can definitely do so.”

In other news from the game’s two leaders:

Manfred and Clark expressed optimism, Manfred more concretely than Clark, that they can come to an agreement on pace-of-play changes for next season. As per the terms of the collective bargaining agreement, Manfred can unilaterally institute tweaks in 2018 if common ground can’t be found.

Clark said the 2018 schedule will feature four extra days off for each team, a condition of the CBA that was completed last winter. That means the ’18 season will start in the middle of the week, as opposed to a Sunday, as has been the case in most recent years. Clark added that the schedule will feature more forgiving firstpitch times for “getaway days,” the last game of a series, when teams have to travel far for their next game.

Manfred said he has maintained “ongoing dialogue” with the Indians about their “Chief Wahoo” logo, which he has acknowledged can reasonably be deemed offensive.