Looking to combat a years-long surge in home runs, MLB slightly deadened its baseballs for the 2021 season.
Rawlings was instructed to loosen the tension on the first of three wool windings within the ball, which reduced its weight without changing its size. MLB expected the changes to be subtle, but the baseballs were noticeably lighter and did not travel as far off the bat.
Various players noted throughout the past year that they could tell the baseballs in play also had a different feel.
While the initial plan was to use the remodeled baseball for the entire year, a new study by astrophysicist Meredith Wills found that the league actually continued deploying the heavier game balls from previous seasons as well, via Bradford William Davis of Business Insider:
According to a new study by Meredith Wills, a Society for American Baseball Research award-winning astrophysicist, the league used two distinct types of baseballs — one lighter and deader than the other — during the 2021 season. By dissecting and carefully measuring hundreds of balls used in 15 major-league parks, Wills found that the league did indeed introduce a new ball with a lighter center, as it pledged to do in the February memo. But she also found that MLB continued to use the older, heavier-center ball at the same time, apparently without telling fans, clubs, or players.
MLB recently confirmed the findings of the study that it used two different baseballs during the 2021 season, but blamed such on production delays caused by the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic:
In a statement, MLB confirmed Wills’ findings: It did indeed use two different balls last season. “Every baseball used in a 2021 MLB game, without exception, met existing specifications and performed as expected,” the league said. But after approving the shift to the new “re-centered” ball for 2021, it said, COVID-19 forced Rawlings to backtrack and use older balls to cover for production delays. “Rawlings manufactures Major League balls on a rolling basis at its factory in Costa Rica,” it said. “Generally, balls are produced 6-12 months prior to being used in a game. Because Rawlings was forced to reduce capacity at its manufacturing facility due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply of re-centered baseballs was not sufficient to cover the entirety of the 2021 season. To address this issue, Rawlings incorporated excess inventory into its shipments to Clubs to provide a full complement of baseballs for the 2021 season.”
MLB added that it informed the Players Association of the decision to use two different balls this year. The league plans to deploy only the lighter ball during the 2022 season.
Rawlings first began shifting production to the new balls in October 2019. It switched back to making the old ball in January 2020 and then again in October 2020.
However, Wills found that every ball produced by Rawlings after January 2021 had the older, heavier center, which contradicts MLB’s claim of production delays hampering its original plan of only using the lighter balls this past season.
MLB tested baseballs with sticky substances
In addition to developing lighter baseballs, MLB began enforcing rules against the use of foreign substances less than three months into the 2021 season.
Many pitchers were unhappy about the midseason decision as they felt it could lead to an uptick in injuries. Some believed the best solution would be for MLB to create a new baseball with a substance already applied to it.
The league responded by experimenting with a pre-tacked ball in select Triple-A games during the final week of the 2021 season and continued to do so in the Arizona Fall League.
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