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MLB 2022: Playing Ball, But Is Anyone Still Watching?

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Jeremy Pena played college baseball for 3 years at UMaine, that kind of cool. Had to shovel snow off the field in the spring : ) Now he is going to cash in.
 
Not going to lie, I wanted JV to come back to Detroit for one more season. I know, the Tigers are a dumpster fire and it won't happen, but yeah.
 
JF_Gophers said:
This pretty much guarantees that Verlander has nothing left.
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Baseballs are still made by hand, so there is going to be some variance on every ball. The rules actually allow for those tolerances.

But in a game that has become very exact and scientific in all aspects, the changes done to baseballs are now becoming more noticeable. It started maybeba decade ago when MLB tried to find synthetic alternatives to a mud hole deep in New Jersey, but none of the alternatives reacted to baseballs like that mud did.

Then, a few years ago (pre-pandemic) it was found that there was a slight change during the manufacturing of the baseballs to "juice" them. I think it was 2019. Pitchers complained about the weights. The difference of a couple grams could be felt by some pitchers. The amateur sleuths wanted to prove this conspiracy true.

Some MLB fans with scientific knowhow found baseballs from early and late in the MLB season and compared them to MILB balls (which some clubs were using the prior year MLB balls) and analyzed them. Weight, stitch thickness, stitch heights; and then they cut into them to check leather thickness, and the stuffing hardness.

Turned out the juiced balls were a little heavier causing more pop from the bats.

MLB denied it. Adamantly. Claimed Rawlings never changed a thing. Everything was still within the specifications of the rule book.

It caused a huge uproar.

Manfred and MLB said they would contact Rawlings and work with them to make consistent balls.

Apparently they did, but also still made the "dead" balls and "juiced" balls.

This is not going to go silently into the night.
 
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