Did MLB change the ball again?

The first month of the 2022 MLB season is in the books. While fans are excited to have baseball after an offseason of indecision and uncertainty, fans are also confused as to why the offense is down. After changes to the collective bargaining agreement between the players association and the commissioner’s office, fans and players were optimistic about a more exciting product of Major League Baseball. With the addition of the designated hitter in the national league to improve strategy (yes, it gives more options for strategy, not less) and offense, things were looking up. But… after looking at batted ball data, it appears that the ball is not traveling the same distance as before. Home run balls from previous years that were hit with the same exit velocity and launch angle are now flyouts. 

Players have speculated that MLB has changed the properties of the ball to manipulate how far it flies. The league has indirectly admitted to doing this in the past. You can see in the years 2020 and before, home runs were more frequent. In 2021, they were down a small amount but that was expected around the league as the league said they made small changes to the ball. One may ask how the league would change the ball to manipulate its flight. Two ways are the most prominent, how to ball compresses and the aerodynamics (changing how far the seam sticks out).

Pitchers are also now claiming the ball has changed and impacted the way they can pitch. Notably, Chris Bassitt has come out and said the ball feels different than last year and throughout the game as well. After players on his team (the New York Mets) got hit at a very high rate, he came out and said the ball changed and that is the reason why his team was hit by pitches so much. So, I went to look at hit by pitch data to see if there was anything to back this up. Turns out that through the first month of the season, the same number of players are hit by pitch per game as last year. This does not surprise me one bit as pitchers have complained day and night that they cannot grip the ball properly and would risk hitting players. This was prominent before 2021 (before regular checks from the umpires). Almost all pitchers would use some sort of substance to doctor the ball with a foreign substance to get a grip on the ball (most just mixed the rosin behind the mound with sunscreen, but some took it much further). As shown in the hit by pitch per game line chart, it can clearly be seen that it was more frequent that batters would get hit by a pitch. Clearly what the pitchers were claiming had no data to support it at all, in fact, it did the opposite. Turns out sticky substances had no impact on not hitting batters with the pitch, in fact, using the substances made it worse. The point is the pitchers have a long history of complaining. If pitchers are unable to throw 100 mph without hitting a batter, it is not the ball or not having grip, it means the pitcher can’t throw 100 mph. 

Now if the ball has not changed, what has? Some are speculating that it is the humidity of the stadiums. It is the data from just the first month of the season (April), so it is colder in outdoor stadiums, making the ball travel less. However, for indoor stadiums, it appears that the league could have changed the humidity of the stadiums in an effort to reduce the amount of three true outcome baseball (walk, home run, or strikeout). While there is no data on the exact humidity of the indoor stadiums at game time, stadiums with humidors and stadiums that had humidors installed in the offseason, have seen a large decrease in home runs (I will have a visualization on this at a later date when I have more data). I have no idea why Major League Baseball would want to do this. I have no idea what dinosaur at the commissioner’s office wants fewer home runs. I do know that fly balls that don’t travel over the fence are more likely than not a flyout. It is possible that the league office thought that there would be more hits that stay in the park but instead have just seen a large increase in outs.

Now while I am still happy about the direction of Major League Baseball going towards a better and more fun product and making changes to the game, it just seems odd to want to decrease the most fun part of baseball. It seems baseball is trying to catch up with the times and excitement that other sports bring, it does not make sense to decrease offense in a league that lacks a connection with younger people.