There has been a lot made recently about a report from The Athletic which went into some detail on the new Humidors around Baseball and also the admission that Baseball has been tinkering with different Baseballs. The long and short of that is that it just confirms what we already knew on both fronts. First that there is a new dead ball which they sometimes used previously and are using more this year and second that they turned up the humidor settings too much in the new ballparks. All this equates to the ball traveling less farther because of a drag the seams have on the ball and thus less homers. Should this help line drive and ground ball hitters more than fly ball hitters? Possibly, but I wouldn’t over think that too much just yet. What is debatable is if this changes in the summer months as they hope it will and if we see a spike then in home runs. Mets SP Chris Bassitt came out with last night, saying basically that pitchers are tired of having a new ball every inning and the grip being unpredictable. I am 100% with him on this and I think we need to keep our eyes and ears out for what is going on because Baseball has a history of just quietly swapping out certain balls with other ones to shift the focus away from what ever it is they are doing. But there is more. The pitchers these days are the ones who dominate the analytics, not hitters. Pitchers are far more aware of not only their strengths and weaknesses but more importantly the hitters strengths and weaknesses. Pitchers are becoming far more robots — especially the bullpen guys — as they utilize the analytics and the ability for coaches to call the pitches with the PitchCom much quicker is allowing them to execute a specific approach on each hitter. The batters will need to adjust, that is the bottom line. We could see the league claim supply chain issues and swap the balls out again and we for sure will have teams who are changing around their own humidor settings, but what is going to change the game and offense the most at this point is going to be the hitters adjusting to the pitchers approach and being happy with opposite field singles and walks over aiming for home…...
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