Just once, I’d like to sit in my stewified bar and have the scemo next to me say…“Mantle wudda hit 90 HR’s…during this live ball era”, instead of you know what.
The Real Culprit
Now, consider the most dedicated baseball researcher alive regarding the home run, Greg Rybarcyzk of HitTracker Online, when he says:
“In 2006 there were 1,454 homers in the “Just Enough” category, which means clearing the fence by approximately 10 feet or less. They are spread fairly smoothly from 0-10 feet of clearance.”
Greg allows us to estimate that at 8.7 feet of clearance, 1,265 homers would have cleared the fence. That is, if you can change the composition of the ball to reduce the length of the long flyball by 8.7 feet, you’d end up with 1,265 fewer home runs. In 2006, we had 5,386 home runs on 135,626 PA, for a rate of 4.0 percent. Knocking out 1,265 would bring the homer rate down to 3.0 percent. The average home run rate from 1982-1992 was 2.9 percent. So, all we have to do is reduce the length of homers by around 8.7 feet, and we’ll get home run output rates from the 1980s. Is this possible? Quoting the good doctor once more:
“The Major League balls are manufactured in Costa Rica and have a compressed cork sphere per the specifications. The Minor League balls are manufactured in China and have a cork center as specified in “1996 Minor League Baseball Proposal”. This cork center is the likely source for the decrease in performance, which results in a comparable Minor League ball hit of 391.8 ft under the same conditions as the Major League balls. Small samples of 1998 MLB baseballs were also tested. The 1998 MLB baseball had a comparable batted-ball distance of 400.5 ft.”
And 400.5 feet minus 391.8 feet equals 8.7 feet.
Repoz
Posted: February 15, 2008 at 07:06 AM |
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So Tattersall is dead?
As the article states, home run rates didn't just increase in a few cities that built new ballparks in the early nineties - they increased everywhere, in both leagues, and they did it over the space of about two years. This was no slow and gradual increase - this was a pronounced jump in 1993 and 1994, and the rates stayed high throughout the mid-to-late '90s, decreasing slightly in the early part of the 21st century.
Parks and expansion played a role in the increase in offense, but it was a pretty small role.
The study posted didn't cover this, but for anyone interested, no, expansion didn't cause the rise in offense in 93-94 either. Yes, expansion can cause an increase in the spread of home run totals, but not in average home run totals. There were other factors at work here. Despite the AL's much more minor participation in the expansion draft, the increase in offense the AL and the NL was about the same once Mile High was taken into account. (Testing the expansion factor was the raison d'etre of the studies, which I'm sure are somewhere on the net)
Steroids are also an unsatisfying answer. The 1993 Phillies notwithstanding, major league baseball players did not start all at once to take steroids.
Juicing the ball remains the best explanation I can come up with, and yet I really don't buy that explanation either - baseball's ability to manipulate the game in that way in secret seems mighty unlikely to me, as does the explanation that it was all an accident.
So I continue to call it the X-Factor. I believe it's real, but I don't know what it is.
Terrific post. You just about exactly sum up my sense of the situation.
The only thing I would add is that when multiple independent variables interact simultaneously -- in this case ballparks, weight-training (with or without steroids), teams' increasing willingness to deploy power-oriented players, the strike zone, as well as the ball (and anything else I might be forgetting) -- they can have powerful effects that aren't explainable by any one operating in isolation.
Unfortunately, the data is pretty fragmentary, so we may never have conclusive evidence. All we can pretty much do is speculate.
FWIW, I don't believe that MLB deliberately juiced the balls, either. I just think that they so happened to start being made tighter, and MLB didn't see any reason to go back.
bingo
I firmly believe this, even though there's not a shred of evidence to support it
from TFA:
That’s part of what frustrates Sherwood… “Their testing window is this big,” he says, his hands a foot apart. “I don’t know why it was ever set that wide.” A ball testing at the high end could travel as much as 50 feet farther than one falling on the low end, he says. That’s the difference between a lot of home runs and a whole lot of home runs.
what I'm wondering is, did the spread of ball bouncing during the testing start to narrow and narrow more towards the high end of the allowed range?
all MLB will say is that the balls are in the "same range" that they've always been
but it's an awfully BIG range
in those days, they shot them out of a cannon against a concrete wall and measured how high they bounced (then they would throw them away, so my dad would always collect a few)
so my brother & I always had bright brandy-new AL baseballs, signed by Joe Cronin; the stitching was much tighter than the little league balls we were used to
the downside was, all the tested balls had a big dent on one side where they had smacked against the wall, so they were way out of round
(you could throw a hellavu breaking ball with them suckers)
Sure, but "juiced" indicates out of spec. they don't have to be.
what I'm wondering is, did the spread of ball bouncing during the testing start to narrow and narrow more towards the high end of the allowed range?
all MLB will say is that the balls are in the "same range" that they've always been
Pretty much exactly what has happened.
Come to think of it, I seem to recall you doing a back of the envelope calculation a few years back and coming up with something pretty close to what this articles did.
Yes. It's around this site somewhere.
AFAIK, Tattersall died in 1981, and SABR bought his logs. Regardless, it's a matter of opinion as to who is the most dedicated researcher alive on the HR. I was giving Greg his deserved props.
Some would argue that Willie Mays is the greatest living ballplayer, and others would point out that Willie Bloomquist is better than he is, today.
Tom
I'd take Mays at 77 over Bloomquist.
It seems like 'steroids' is a poor fit to the data. But 'steroids' in conjunction with a bunch of other possible factors isn't necessarily out of the realm of possibility. It's an awfully hard thing to know, though. What's funny is that 'steroids' is actually a better fit for the data from around 1983-1987 then it is for 1989-1994.
Obviously it's impossible to know for sure. But the plummet in offense that took place between 1962 and 1963 in conjunction with the strike zone redefinition of that year -- a year in which there were no ballpark changes, and none of the other elements in play the way they would be in the 1980s/90s -- provides a vivid illustration of just how powerful a strike zone change can be all by itself.
For myself, having watched Ben Johnson in 1984 and in 1988, I have a hard time believing that PEDs aren't most of the story.
I mean, they could couch in terms of "tightening up the specs" or some such to make it sound reasonable and fair
I assume it's because
1. that accusation was made loudly in 1987
2. and was just as vehemently denied
so that
3. they can't bring themselves to even discuss it
I mean, they could couch in terms of "tightening up the specs" or some such to make it sound reasonable and fair
You're assuming that MLB knowingly enacted some change in ball construction, and did so in secret. That's one scenario I find extremely implausible.
I don't have the foggiest idea
Nor do any of the rest of us.
I just think that whatever happened, the notion that it was a willful, intentional master secret plan conceived of and enacted by MLB, with the ball manufacturer engaged as a co-conspirator, and not one soul involved has uttered a peep about it after all these years, is just about the least likely scenario.
The BTF Credo!
I think most people agree on that. I'm pretty sure the balls are different now than they were in 1992, but I'm also pretty sure that MLB didn't do it on purpose.
Whatever the reason for the increased offense, though, it's suited MLB quite well, so there's not a whole lot of impetus behind an effort to find the culprit.
The BTF Credo!
This is wrong, by the way. There is evidence to support it, it's just not dispositive.
If we're looking for proof that the balls are different, I don't think we'll ever see that.
I'd say I'm fairly sure the ball are different now than they were in 1992, and I'm quite confident that MLB didn't do it on purpose.
At any rate there is no reason to wonder why MLB is "loathe to admit" anything. There's almost certainly nothing for them to admit.
Moreover, if they were to say that apparently the ball resiliency meaningfully changed while still being within spec, it comes across as:
1) MLB's ball vendor's quality control is crapola
and
2) MLB's spec range is so wide as to be useless
It isn't surprising that MLB isn't rushing to get that message out.
I was pretty sure he was dead. I was joking.
1) MLB's ball vendor's quality control is crapola
and
2) MLB's spec range is so wide as to be useless
It isn't surprising that MLB isn't rushing to get that message out.
Quality Control is completely about within spec. As long as the balls are in spec, QC isn't crapola. The spec range isn't useless. It just allows for a difference in "eras".
In my many years of working with the Quality function in a manufacturing company, QC was about a hell of lot more than simply being within spec. That was a minimal requirement, not their endpoint.
Actually that's a lie. I just now started wondering what the stats would look like.
And unless ALL the players decided to start using steroids ALL at the same time...I get to live through a liveball era (#### Hal Lanier!) and not a steroid era.
But then again I've always felt that aliens stole my grandmother and returned her with blue hair.
Because they fear that will call into question the integrity of the game. ;)
Without having the wherewithal or the ambition to tackle the issue empirically, I’ve always suspected there was something different about the ball. This sentiment is rooted in my remembrances of the 1987 season, when home run rates inexplicably jumped until it pretty much became common knowledge that the ball was juiced. Baseball, realizing its faux paus in trying to slip that one in under our noses, started mixing back in the old ball at some point in the season and, thus, home-run rates fell, though they didn’t go back to normal until the 1988 season. Anyway, that’s my theory of the 1987 season. And after realizing the sudden shift towards offense that occurred in 1993 and thinking about the various explanations, I always come back to the ball.
Also, has anyone ever tested the COR variances of a ball put into play from its original COR?
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