Nick Pinczewski
Professor McMullen
Data Journalism
12/1/19
Juiced Balls Lead to Controversy
D.J. LeMahieu said he’s always liked hitting home runs. Which means 2019 must have been a very enjoyable season for the Yankees utility man. LeMahieu never hit more than 15 home runs in any of his first eight seasons. He crushed 26 last season.
LeMahieu isn’t the only player to experience a power surge in 2019. In his first five seasons with the Braves and Cubs, Angels second baseman Tommy La Stella hit 10 home runs – combined. Not exactly All Star numbers. But 2019, told a different story. La Stella hit 15 home runs in the first half of the season and was named to the American League All Star Team.
Astros infielder Yuli Gurriel hit 34 home runs in his first three seasons. He blasted 31 last season. Gurriel, has been in the league since 2005 but never hit more than 22 bombs in a season except for 2009. That was 10 years ago, while he was in Cuba!
All across the sport, baseballs left the yard at a record setting pace. Major league hitters obliterated the previous home run record of 6,105 by blasting 6,776 dingers. A staggering 273 players hit 10 or more home runs this season. The Baltimore Orioles pitching staff was shelled for a record 305 home runs.
We can safely say that pitchers didn’t suddenly forgot how to throw strikes. So, what accounted for this season’s remarkable and unprecedented home run surge?
A lot of players, led by Cy Young Award winner Justin Verlander, believe Major League Baseball used “juiced” balls, balls that were easier to hit out of the by relocating the center core, or pill. According to research done by FiveThirtyEight, changes in the manufacturing of balls came to a climax this season with the production of balls that were easier to hit for longer distances.
“It’s a f—— joke,” Verlander told ESPN. “Major League Baseball’s turning this game into a joke. They own Rawlings, and you’ve got [commissioner Bob] Manfred up here saying it might be the way they center the pill. They own the f—— company. If any other $40 billion company bought out a $400 million company and the product changed dramatically, it’s not a guess as to what happened. We all know what happened.
“Manfred the first time he came in, what’d he say? He said we want more offense. All of a sudden he comes in, the balls are juiced? It’s not coincidence. We’re not idiots.”
MLB bought Rawlings, the sports equipment manufacturing company from Newell Brands for $395 million dollars in June of 2018, according to the Wall Street Journal.
One year later 24 teams hit 200 plus home runs another MLB Record. Fourteen teams set franchise records. The Twins blasted a league record 307 homers. The Yankeers were second with 306, one year after setting the previous record of 267.
August was a particularly fun month for home run fans as 1,228 home runs were hit. The Yankees had a record 74 of those home runs. The previous record for homers in a month was 58 set in 1999 by the Mariners.
Juicing is not new to baseball but usually the focus is on players, not equipment. In 1997, Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa electrified baseball fans with a home run battle. It was later found that both players, and many others, were using performance enhancing drugs (PED’s). It was commonly known as juicing.
MLB implemented one of the most diligent drug-testing programs of any professional sports league. Players are clean. Are the balls?
Manfred denied that the league doctored balls. He offered no explanation for the record 6,776 home runs hit in 2019. In fact, despite the data, he said that MLB doesn’t want an overabundance of home runs.
“The flaw in logic is that baseball wants more home runs,” Manfred told the New York Post. “If you sat in owners meeting and listen to people on how the game is played, that is not a sentiment of owners for whom I work. There’s no desire among ownership to increase homers in the game, to the contrary they are concerned about how many we have.”
Baseball has more home runs than ever. If the numbers increase next season, Manfred will have a hard time saying the balls haven’t been altered.
Sources:
1 https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27731274/inside-long-list-home-run-records-set-2019
2 https://www.baseball-reference.com/players/l/lemahdj01.shtml
3 http://theconversation.com/whats-really-behind-baseballs-home-run-surge-120265
5 https://nypost.com/2019/08/04/dj-lemahieu-comes-up-clutch-once-again-for-yankees/
This is a graph showing the home Run comparison from 2018 to 2019. And the dramatic increase that these three players experienced.
Data Journalism 395 