MLB study can’t explain juiced ball
‘Have to accept ... the baseball is going to vary’
SAN DIEGO – Players, agents and clubs are conceiving and even consummating close to $1 billion worth of transactions at MLB’s winter meetings. Yet the integrity of the game continues to be threatened by a spheroid that costs about $9 and could be affected by even the simple act of a mosquito buzzing around the horsehide of a cow.
On Wednesday, an esteemed panel of four scientists and statisticians, two MLB officials and two executives from MLB-owned Rawlings released conclusions from a study that aimed to quantify yet another massive spike in ball carry in 2019 – a season that saw 6,776 home runs hit, an 11% spike from another record, juiced-ball year in 2017.
It is a complex and vexing issue, one prone to conspiracy theories from fans, anger from aggrieved pitchers and, unfortunately for the game, appears no closer to an outcome that will please all parties.
“As we continue this journey of discovery,” said MLB senior vice president Morgan Sword, “one of the things we’re going to have to do is accept the fact the baseball is going to vary. The baseball has varied in its performance probably for the entire history of our sport.”
The second MLB-commissioned report in three years on baseballs included both reasons and recommendations for the home run surge.
This 2019 spike? It was 60% attributable to a decrease in drag and 40% to a change in “launch conditions” among flyball-happy hitters, according to Alan Nathan, professor of physics emeritus at the University of Illinois.
Drilling down into the cause of that drag decrease remains the panel’s white whale.
Some 35% of the drag decrease can be attributed to the seam height on the baseballs, says Nathan. As for the remaining 65%?
“Unfortunately,” he said, “we have not yet been able to identify these factors, despite lots of effort.”
So chief among the panel’s recommendations was, yes, more study. And developing mechanisms to better control ball performance, such as installing environmental monitors in ballparks, better monitoring storage conditions and chain of custody from Rawlings’ Costa Rica factory to ballparks.
And storage once the balls have arrived, which might ultimately include expanded use of humidors based on the climate of every ballpark.
Sword even considered the source of MLB’s proudly natural product: Have environmental conditions changed for the cows who literally provide the skin off their back for the good of the game?
It’s clear few theories are off the table, but will that be enough to satisfy a beehive of angry pitchers, from Justin Verlander on down to rank-and-file hurlers who find their livelihood threatened by glorified pop-ups that sail for home runs?
They have no other choice. “Again, it’s something that’s always existed,” says Chris Young, MLB’s vice president of on-field operations who pitched 13 big-league seasons. “I can speak personally to that and say that on any given night my job was to be better than the opposing pitcher.
“Ultimately, if you’re both pitching with the same baseballs and playing with the same baseballs, then you have to be better, and that’s what our sport is about, and that’s your responsibility.”
The panel also confirmed what clubs like the Cardinals themselves measured – that the balls used in the 2019 postseason – an admittedly smaller and perhaps insufficient sample – did not travel as far as regular-season balls. The ball’s only difference was a postseason stamp, and the seam height was unchanged from the regular season, yet the drag was higher.
That Major League Baseball clubs don’t know which ball will show up for the 2020 season is undeniably a competitive annoyance.
As they prepare a contending roster, can the Diamondbacks reasonably expect that shortstop Ketel Marte’s 32 home runs in 2019 – 18 above his previous career high set in 2018 – are his true colors? Or a drag-and-seam-fueled outlier?
Just one of the many tentacles to an issue that won’t go away anytime soon.
As for the conspiracy theories, that MLB purchased Rawlings in June 2018 for the purpose of manipulating results to its liking?
“We have never been asked to juice or dejuice a baseball,” Rawlings president and CEO Michael Zlaket insisted, “and we’ve never done anything of the sort, never would on our own.”
Zlaket, naturally, has no control over whether pitchers and fans will accept that contention – nor, for now, do the scientists aiming to find a cure for the game’s juiced-ball blues.