© Peter G. Aiken
The baseballs are “juiced.” With a massive surge in the number of home runs around Major League Baseball, discussions over whether the ball itself has changed the game have become rampant. Finally, it appears there is irrefutable evidence, courtesy of Dr. Meredith Wills, an astrophysicist, that the composition and design of baseballs have indeed changed.
Yesterday, Wills posted a piece on The Athletic examining just exactly what has changed within every MLB ball to make them fly further on a consistent basis. Wills joined Larry Krueger and Bill Laskey on Wednesday to discuss her research about a ball that projects to produce at least an additional 1,000 home runs (6,618 total) across the majors this season, with 16 teams projected to break their franchise single-season home run records, according to Krueger.
Krueger asked Wills whether MLB itself has been involved in some of the changes, which include lower seams, smoother leather covers, a rounder, more symmetrical ball and a more centered core.
“Believe it or not, that’s a trick question, because MLB bought Rawlings last year,” Wills said. “MLB owns Rawlings. So by definition, they own the table, not just have a seat at it.”
As for why MLB bought the company, she said it was to investigate the surge last year and have more say in the balls’ constructions.
“I believe the reason they made the purchase was they did have that home run committee that was looking for why the home fun surge happened and figured out it had to be the ball, they couldn’t figure out why,” Wills said. That was probably a motivation for MLB to buy Rawlings, and they said when they bought it, ‘The reason we’re doing this is we want to have more say.’”