UTK Special 2/17/22
Big Balls
As I started this piece, I thought about all the people I could write or call to lock this down, but I paused. This is going to be a pure opinion piece and I’ll let others decide on the scientific validity here rather than making this a long, well-reported piece. Bear with me, because rather than being slapdash, I think this will help the process in the long run.
I saw this Tom House tweet this morning and after watching the movement a couple times, I had a thought:
If a pitcher - Courtney is in the Mets system - can do that with a two ounce ball, maybe altering the ball is what baseball needs.
Simply: The baseball should be changed, immediately, to a six ounce ball, one more than the standard baseball in place for over a century.
I could call Rawlings or, better, Dr. Meredith Wills, to see if this is possible, but let’s assume it is. It wouldn’t be tough to find a pill that’s one ounce heavier and do everything else the same way. It would give Rawlings a clear line in the sand to change production and have a single construction of the ball.
What would a heavier ball do to pitchers? Not much. Many pitchers have grown up throwing heavier balls - Driveline’s red ball is eight ounces - and most of the injury risk here is with the much heavier (one pound and up) and unprepared athletes put on weighted ball routines by coaches that don’t understand the priniciples. One ounce would change speed and likely motion, but certainly would be a more easily managed change than moving the mound back.
What would a heavier ball do to hitters? They wouldn’t hit it as far, which cuts down on homers. It’s not so much that we’d be in the dead ball era and the restitution of the ball would be the same (and hopefully consistent!) I’m not sure whether it would change anything about the fly/ground split - my guess is no, but it’s a guess.
What would a heavier ball do to a game? Perhaps less strikeouts and homers make the pace of a game a little bit faster. I’d imagine not by much. The run environment would likely be slightly lower, but that could be affected by a lot of things that are not the ball.
Fielders? No real change. The ball would likely come a bit slower off the bat, so that’s a plus, and the heavier ball would be a small adjustment on throws. On a softly hit grounder, we might end up with a few more infield singles. I worry a bit about some of the crazy angles and throws some shortstops make with a heavier ball, but I think they’d quickly adjust to not making the throw sometimes.
Overall, I see no real downside. Is the game changed? Yes, and largely positively or at least in the ways people discuss wanting to see the game changed - faster pace, more action, etc. Is the game noticeably changed? No, not to the fan in the park or on TV. If you watched a game from 2001 and a game from 2023, it would look the same. Maybe the seams should be changed so that when we look back at holographic highlights, we’ll know was it the five or six ounce ball.
I’m not sure anyone will buy into this idea, but I’m curious to see if anyone thinks the science doesn’t hold up. A new ball won’t help with baseball’s economic issues, but with all the experimental rule changes, here’s one idea that still looks like baseball.
I'm surely no physicist, scientist or mathematician, so if this comes off as dumb, i'm just a dumb amateur ham-n-egger ballplayer. Your idea here is VERY interesting! Was the crazy movement on the 2 oz ball in the video clip the result of it being able to spin more than the regular weighted ball or more of a factor of the change in the gravity forces? If MLB moved to a slightly heavier ball, would that REDUCE movement of the pitch and enable hitters to hit straighter pitchers and barrel them up more often? I'm sure we could surmise but would need to see it play out. VERY interesting thought her Will, as always. Now I'm going to be running this around my brain all day long! Keep up the great work.