Home Runs Are Way Down All Across Major League Baseball, But Why Is That? Rob Manfred Fucked With The Baseballs Once Again

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Baseball is a sport that has seen scandal after scandal run through it in its history. Whether it's the Black Sox, Pete Rose, Biogenesis, the Cardinals data hack thing, or the Astros sign stealing scheme, it's clear that baseball has dealt with more controversy than any other big 4 sport. There was one in recent memory, however, that was swept completely under the rug to shut down all talk: the two baseball scandal. We're talking balls people. 

(I'm going to quickly recap what went down last year with the two different balls, if you care to skip ahead feel free I won't be insulted nor know you even did that)

An investigation was conducted by an astrophysicist named Dr. Meredith Wills who concluded without a shred of a doubt that two different kinds of baseballs were put into play in 2021. One baseball was juiced and would fly out of parks while the other went completely nowhere. I recapped the findings here when the story first broke. Here's a quick excerpt…

MLB claims that because of covid there were production delays with the new balls. To make sure they had enough for the season they went into a batch of the old ones and mixed the two together. They also claim that the league informed the union that two balls were going to be in play for the season. 10 players, including several union reps, were asked about this and none of them had any idea this was happening. 

MLB claims they used old, juiced balls from prior years to make up for the production delays and make sure MLB had enough for the season. Dr. Meredith Wills knows for a fact that the old, juiced version were being made as late as August of 2021 and being used in games. She also knows that the "newer", lighter version planned for the 2021 season were being used as early as October of 2019. You can tell on the inside of a baseball when exactly it was made. Wills caught Manfred and his clowns right in the middle of their lie. Not great Rob!

Extremely shady stuff. With tons of gambling companies now in bed with baseball there was a legitimate case for game manipulation here. You saw it first hand in the Field of Dreams Game where the Yankees and White Sox could not stop hitting homers. You'd imagine the league didn't want that game being boring so why not send in the juiced balls to spice things up and make it entertaining as fuck for the average fan. Sounds more like the WWE to me. 

If MLB wanted lots of runs scored they could simply send the juiced ones to that series. If they wanted a pitchers duel they could send the deadened ones to that series. Breaking it down to an even further level, if a team was down runs late and needed a rally you could in theory put the rocket balls in there to really give them the advantage. Consider Pandora's box opened with the possibilities. 

Well, somehow some way this scandal was swept right under the rug. You've barely heard a whisper about it since that report came out. I've really never seen Manfred challenged on it once and asked about the lies he fed the fans/players. Instead everyone made a big fuss over the Yankees sealed letter about 2015 and 2016. This right here is potentially the scandal of all scandals. We're talking potential racketeering by Manfred and his minions. 

(If you skipped ahead, pick up the blog here)

Fast forward to this year and what is happening throughout all of baseball. Offense is way down and no one is hitting homers unless your name is either Anthony Rizzo or Joc Pederson. 

Yesterday we got this report from The Athletic detailing why: Manfred deadened the baseball AGAIN. The production issues in the past have been "resolved" and there is one universal ball in play, per MLB. Home run rates adjusted for weather are lower than any year during the juiced ball era. 

The article cites the drag on the ball being higher and essentially deadening everything. 

Nathan also found that the drag (Cd) on the ball — once atmospheric conditions were taken into account — is higher this year than last year. That’s significant because higher drag on the ball means that it will not go as far, even if it’s hit as hard.

You also need to factor in how there are now a plethora of new humidors installed across the league which have been found to decrease batted ball distance early on here. So essentially Manfred has done everything in his power to limit offense in Major League Baseball in 2022. He sees runs on the board and cowers in fear. That 12-8 slugfest last night between the Yanks and O's? I bet he has them trying to hit actual wiffle balls with holes in them tonight so the children are protected from the terror. 

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And by the way, another thing with the balls. The pitchers fucking hate them. Clem is working on a blog to elaborate more on Bassitt's thoughts right now, but I had to include it here. 

Weird how MLB said there's one universal ball this year, except there clearly isn't. Maybe there's a consistent core to every ball, but the outside appears to be different. How do they manage to keep fucking this up???

And one last thing….

If you're hypothetically a left handed hitting power outfield bat who plays for the Yankees and embodies his entire game around the three true outcome, you may want to reconfigure a few things.  

RIP Joey Gallo. Fuck you Rob Manfred.