Tuesday, December 6, 2022

A suggestion that Major League Baseball used three different types of baseballs in 2022, and used a bouncier ball more often in Yankees games and other special events

Insider (from a long article, acquiring the balls wasn't easy, so the conclusions are based on limited data):

[MLB commissioner] promised from the podium, that was all over: "Every baseball that's in use in '22 was produced under the new manufacturing process" – meaning, the deader ball – "and in fact, the process has resulted in a more consistent baseball." 

But according to a new analysis of more than 200 balls used in games during the 2022 season conducted by ... a Society for American Baseball Research award-winning astrophysicist, that's not true. Major League Baseball did not settle into using a single, more consistent ball last season, [the] research suggests: It used three.

...

This new third ball's weight centers somewhere between the juiced ball the league phased out last season and the newly announced dead ball: It is on average about one-and-a-half grams lighter than the juiced and one gram heavier than the dead. According to the league's own research, a heavier ball tends to have more pop off the bat, meaning the third ball would likely travel farther than a dead ball hit with equal force. 

...

The only Goldilocks balls we obtained from the regular season that did not have commemorative stamps were found in Yankees games

...

an MLB spokesman said in a statement that "the conclusions of this research are wholly inaccurate and just plain wrong."