There’s an old expression in sports when there’s a particular play or issue in question: The ball don’t lie.
Make no mistake, baseballs aren’t lying this season. They’re juiced and there’s no denying it: Not by the historic home run surge, not by sabermetrics and certainly not by the eye test.
Major League Baseball is on record pace for 6,668 homers this year, which would shatter the previous single-season record of 6,105 set in 2017. And 16 teams are on track to break franchise records for home runs, including the suddenly big-swinging Twins, whose 166 home runs so far are the most first-half dingers in MLB history.
Don’t tell me the eye-popping spike in homers is because of a widespread emphasis on launch angle, or because hard-throwing hurlers are making more mistakes at the top of the zone. And it’s not because the majority of the league is suddenly using performance-enhancing drugs again.
This is about the ball (again). As commissioned independent reports from the historic 2017 season confirmed, and this year’s dinger numbers are proving once again, the balls are clearly more aerodynamic. Even Commissioner Rob Manfred admitted Monday on ESPN that “this year the baseball has a little less drag. It doesn’t need to change very much in order to produce meaningful change in terms of the way the game is played on the field.”
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A “little less” drag? Manfred’s severely understating the effect, although he’s not wrong about the “meaningful change” we’re seeing.
As Dr. Meredith Wills explained in an in-depth piece for The Athletic, the ball’s seams are lower by a couple millimeters and the ball is slightly smoother than a year ago. Whether that’s a result of “variation year-to-year” as Manfred has explained it, or intentional juicing of the ball by the league in an effort to re-kindle interest in the game — MLB does own Rawlings, after all — there’s no denying that in 2019 the ball is behaving differently both off the bat (higher average exit velocities) and in the air (longer average distance).
Those within the game know. Astros’ ace Justin Verlander, the starting pitcher for the American League in Tuesday’s all-star game, told ESPN the balls are a “joke” and that he “100 percent” believes MLB is intentionally juicing baseballs.
Verlander’s comments came a day after Cubs manager Joe Maddon noted, “You could just have stamped Titleist on the side of these things,” and added that this year’s baseballs seem to be smaller to him. Meanwhile, Manfred continues to insist there’s been no change in the manufacturing of the baseball.
“Baseball has done nothing, given no direction for an alteration in the baseball,” Manfred told reporters Tuesday ahead of the All-Star Game. “The flaw in logic is that baseball wants more home runs. If you sat in owners meetings and listen to people on how the game is played, that is not a sentiment among the owners for whom I work.”
So what really is happening? Is Manfred and MLB’s front office really behind a juicing conspiracy to increase attendance, TV viewership and overall interest in a game that is having attendance issues? Can the trend be simply explained away as a side-effect of the Launch Angle Era, and the domination of Three True Outcomes? Or — gasp — are we seeing the roots of a Steroid Era 2.0?
I don’t have the full answer. But after watching a video-game Home Run Derby in Cleveland, and as balls continue to fly out of parks at a record pace, let’s not have the wool pulled over our eyes. Something artificial is afoot behind this surge in bombs, and it comes each pitch in a juiced-up ball.
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