Helter Skelter

I’m coming down fast but don’t let me break you.

Marcus Stroman joins in the conspiracy theory that MLB secretly changed the balls, and that is responsible for an outbreak of “blisters on my fingers.” I really like Rob Manfred’s reaction to this:

“There are certain mistakes in life that if you pay attention to what’s going on around you, you are not inclined to make,” Manfred said around this time last year. “There was a scandal in Japan over the baseball being changed that cost the commissioner his job. I like my current gig, so I think you can rest assured that the baseball is the same as it was last year.”

If someone had a blister data base, we could how many pitchers a year get blisters for the first time. It could be the focus on increasing spin rates might be causing it as much as the ball.

In general, I dismiss conspiracy theories. The more people needed to keep a conspiracy under wraps, the more likely someone is to talk. The best explanation is a simple one; the ball is within MLB tolerances, but those tolerances are so wide that this ball is a bit livelier. There is no need for conspiracies, just the way this batch of balls came out of the factory.

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