Ball Tests

MLB issued a memo to teams about the 2017 ball:

Major League Baseball, stung by a rising level of consternation and suspicion regarding the composition of its baseballs, sent a memo to all 30 clubs Saturday detailing the rigorous testing process its balls undergo, and concluding that “there is no evidence that the composition of the ball has changed in any way.”

…

The memo, a one-page, 18-point document, notes that balls are tested at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell Baseball Research Center at least three times a year. Those tests measure the ball’s size, weight and COR (bounciness), seam height, circumference and weight.

MLB notes that the average COR measure of balls used this season was 0.555, slightly lower than the 2016 figure, which it did not cite. The higher the COR, the greater the ball’s exit velocity on contact.

The memo’s summary reads: “The baseball in use today tests well within the established guidelines on every key performance metric. Furthermore, there is no evidence that the composition of the ball has changed in any way that would lead to a meaningful impact on on-field play.”

That is not what an independent experiment found.

MLB is saying two things here. One, that the baseball meets specifications. The specifications are so wide, however, that meeting them can produce both a dead and live ball. Two, that the ball hasn’t changed. If you read the memo, it implies that the ball has been the same over the last few years, and that test were conducted at the end of the 2016 season to see if the ball had changed in the second half.

I’ll mention again, maybe the PED era showed us how far batters could go, and they would have gotten there eventually anyway.

from baseballmusings.com http://ift.tt/2tyAc4K