Atlanta Braves lost home runs and deadened baseballs
The Atlanta Braves are tied for the NL lead in home runs, but players and fans say that this year’s baseball cost them at least ten more.
Way back in 2019, Alan wrote that the baseballs were juiced, and the Atlanta Braves were taking advantage of it. Flash forward to 2022, and you’ll find players and fans screaming that MLB deadened the ball.
MLB’s kept mum on the subject so far, leading to uninformed speculation from fans, batters, and some unrelated, ill-conceived complaints from a pitcher. So, let’s look at those home runs that stop short of the fence.
Where to begin?
In Thursday’s issue of The Athletic (subscription required), David O’Brien wrote about the reaction of Atlanta Braves players to those home runs that don’t quite get there,
Austin Riley says the ball leaves the bat as it did in the past, then runs out of gas.
What I’ve noticed, the ball comes off (the bat) fine, but it gets out there and just dies . . .
Teammate Travis d’Arnaud believes he knows why.
“I think because of the bigger seams, if you put it in the air it’s going to go higher instead of farther now. Whereas the line drive . . . (stays) low but (keeps) carrying. . . that tells me the ball we have been using, the seams are higher. . .
TDA is right about the physics involved, but he was probably wrong when he said the balls were slicker than in the past. Justin Verlander said the balls were too slippery during the 2017 World Series. If Verlander was right and d’Arnaud is right today, how does anyone hold on to the ball?
Great minds agree or don’t
Both players said what their senses told them. Baseballs were slicker in 2017 than in prior years and remain slick now, but perhaps they feel more slippery – slipperier, whatever – to the Atlanta Braves catcher because he noticed the higher seams and subconsciously decided MLB had changed everything again?
MLB making changes to the ball shouldn’t surprise anyone, nor should raising the seams slightly as the solution to too many homers and not enough base hits shock you.
Restoring equilibrium
In 2018, Dr. Meredith Willis investigated the baseballs and found only two significant differences in materials between earlier baseballs and those used in the 2107 home run surge; the size of the pill and the thickness of the laces. MLB has since restored the pill and adjusted the ball so that the coefficient of restitution is closer to the optimum design. In other words, the ball was returned to its original specifications, not deadened.
The thicker laces were highlighted as a potential cause of the blister epidemic in 2016-2017 and contributed to the home run surge. Thicker laces meant tighter lacing and lower seams that prevented pitchers from picking at the laces to induce spin.
She concluded all of this was an unintended consequence of improving manufacturing Rawlings’ processes and probably went unnoticed because seam height wasn’t something they had to measure.
It’s also reasonable to assume that raising the seam was the quickest way to restore drag to pre-surge level, and work continues on a ball that doesn’t require an added substance for grip.
Get a grip!
When MLB cracked down on Spider Tack and other illicit sticky concoctions, they said research on a standard replacement like the tacky baseball used in Japan was underway. Rosenthal noted that an experimental ball was used in a few AAA games last year, but Major League pitchers who used it weren’t impressed.
Undeterred (apparently), MLB is trying a new version of that ball in the Texas League this season. So far, pitchers like it, or at least they haven’t complained about it.
Atlanta Braves Pitchers aren’t complaining.
While batters are complaining, most pitchers aren’t. Pitchers want to keep the ball in the ballpark. They also understand that homers happen to every pitcher but prefer not to have the homer hit by a player without an extra-base hit in his career (or by a pitcher, but that problem was solved via a new rule). This year’s ball does that, and some say it does more.
Marlins pitching coach Richard Bleier, Cardinals starter Miles Mikolas, Phillies righty Kyle Gibson disagree, and several other pitchers reached out to The Athletic to say they didn’t have an issue with this year’s baseball. Gibson believes it’s tackier than in the past.
Gibson admits he’s in the minority but says he’s able to make the ball do things he couldn’t do in the past thanks to the new ball and MLB’s new super-secret rosin noted in Ken Rosenthal’s post for The Athletic (subscription required),
The 8-ounce Honduran Pine rosin bags manufactured by Pelican are subject to strict chain-of-custody protocols and are the responsibility of a specific clubhouse staff member at each major-league park.
Pitchers who do complain claim it’s the reason batters – specifically Mets batters – are getting hit more often, a claim thoroughly debunked by Brittany Ghiroli and Eno Sarris in their post in The Athletic (subscription required). One executive told Sarris and Ghiroli that players have to work with what they have.
“Just because we are working with a ‘dead ball’ now doesn’t mean the ‘juiced ball’ was right,” said one executive. “It just may require some adjustments, for hitters and pitchers, and that’s often an uncomfortable thing.”
That’s a wrap
Fan angst among this year’s that-should-have-been-a-homer crowd amuses me because I remember many of them crying because somebody hit a weak popup that landed 10 rows deep.
Next. Why Ozzie isn't Hitting. dark
MLB’s failure to let the players and public know what it’s doing to improve things — specifically like the baseball — is bad management. Knowing wouldn’t make everyone happy, but at least everyone would know what was going on.