First. I can't remember if I knew that Rawlings was owned by the MLB. That makes me more suspicious then. Shouldn't there be more drag for the pitchers then too if this is the theory being presented?
Here's what Manfred has said why the ball might be jumping off the bats.
From the NY Post.
He insisted they are not being made any differently by Rawlings, which is owned by MLB, and they are still trying to figure out why exactly the drag has changed.
“[Rawlings] hasn’t changed their process in any meaningful way,” Manfred said Thursday at the end of the owners’ meetings. “They haven’t changed their materials.”
Manfred cited last year’s report, written by a committee of scientists and data specialists, which identified the pill at the center of the ball playing a factor. If the pill is not perfectly centered, the ball wobbles when hit and creates more drag.
“We think one of the things that may be happening is they’re getting better at centering the pill, [which] creates less drag,” Manfred said. “In addition to that, there’s all these man-made issues: hand-stitched, where it’s stored after it’s made, where it’s stored at the ballpark, who puts the mud on the ball, how much mud they put on the ball. It’s really difficult to isolate any single cause. But we do think it’s a drag issue.”
Read more here.
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