What Should MLB Do About the 'Juiced' Ball Debate?
These days, everybody digs the long ball. Since halfway through the 2015 season, Major League Baseball has seen a sustained power surge that in 2017 broke the all-time record for home runs in a season. The spike has been not just unprecedented, but also unexpected. Just before the inflection point in 2015, offense was down so much that some writers began proposing rule changes to save the game. After the season’s second half saw a sudden spike in home-run rates, it wasn’t long before many observers arrived at an explanation: The balls were different, altered in ways invisible to the naked eye but enough to make more fly balls clear the fences. In other words, they argued, the balls were “juiced.”
Since then, writers and researchers have used various methods—analyzing publicly available statistics, , and —in an attempt to confirm the juiced-ball hypothesis. The differences, Rob Arthur of told me, are so minuscule “even someone intimately familiar with the baseball probably wouldn’t detect them.” The seams, , are flatter, reducing air resistance; the rubber-and-cork cores, , are lighter by about half a gram. That may sound insignificant, but on such a small object, the weight difference alone can . Combine a few such tweaks and players who previously had “warning-track power”—enough to hit the ball to the wall, but not over it—become home-run hitters, and the league sees a historic increase in offense. Other factors may contribute to the home-run bump (for example, the gradual climate change–induced has a slight effect). But Arthur, who, says doesn’t nearly account for the whole increase, leaving the juiced ball the most compelling explanation.
