The Baseball 2024

[Sanfran327]

Palmer asks this question early every year: What kind of baseball are we going to have this season?

Traditionally, the ball doesn't start jumping at OPACY until mid to late May when it's really warmed up. We've already seen 4 balls sail over Lord Walltimore and Westburg's oppo taco last night. Witt's HR last night was completely demolished. The park is already playing like it's summertime, and we're only through April 1.

Seems to me that we could have a VERY live baseball this season based on what we've seen so far. 

Edited April 2 by Sanfran327

[dystopia]

The running theory is it has to do with whether there are more good FA hitters after the season or pitchers. More good hitters, MLB deadens the ball so they have subpar seasons in their contract years and get less money. Vice versa for pitchers. 

https://www.foxsports.com/stories/mlb/2025-mlb-free-agent-rankings-top-10-pitchers

With Burnes and Wheeler on there, it certainly has merit. Wheeler signed the extension but that was very recent.

[Just Regular]

Rob Manfred without checking says we didn't do anything.

[Frobby]

League-wide, 1.12 HR/G so far, compared to 1.21 last season.  Colder weather, so that number could go up, but it’s certainly too soon to say the ball has more juice this year.  

[Can_of_corn]

Just now, Just Regular said:

Rob Manfred without checking says we didn't do anything.

The issue is the huge amount of variance that they allow themselves.

They can be truthful when saying that a particular year's worth of balls falls within the same standards as the year before.

Thinking on it, I'm a bit surprised that the MLBPA hasn't pushed for a tighter set of specifications, I would think that players would prefer more certainty year to year.

[Sanfran327]

3 minutes ago, Frobby said:

League-wide, 1.12 HR/G so far, compared to 1.21 last season.  Colder weather, so that number could go up, but it’s certainly too soon to say the ball has more juice this year.  

Thanks, just going off of what we've seen at 4 games in Baltimore this year. Seems to be much different than what we're used to seeing early on. Particularly the balls that have cleared the LF wall. I think they even talked about it last night that they were surprised that 4 balls have already cleared it when it took a little while to happen last year.

[Spy Fox]

8 minutes ago, dystopia said:

The running theory is it has to do with whether there are more good FA hitters after the season or pitchers. More good hitters, MLB deadens the ball so they have subpar seasons in their contract years and get less money. Vice versa for pitchers. 

https://www.foxsports.com/stories/mlb/2025-mlb-free-agent-rankings-top-10-pitchers

With Burnes and Wheeler on there, it certainly has merit. Wheeler signed the extension but that was very recent.

Whose running theory is that and is there any evidence supporting that as a reason for the variation?

[Fiver6565]

10 minutes ago, dystopia said:

The running theory is it has to do with whether there are more good FA hitters after the season or pitchers. More good hitters, MLB deadens the ball so they have subpar seasons in their contract years and get less money. Vice versa for pitchers. 

https://www.foxsports.com/stories/mlb/2025-mlb-free-agent-rankings-top-10-pitchers

With Burnes and Wheeler on there, it certainly has merit. Wheeler signed the extension but that was very recent.

I don't know where you are getting that but what an asinine 'theory'.

Not everything is a freaking conspiracy, FFS.  We are less than a week into the season, a couple guys get a hold of one and suddenly we're manipulating baseballs to keep contracts down? 

[Just Regular]

4 minutes ago, Can_of_corn said:

The issue is the huge amount of variance that they allow themselves.

They can be truthful when saying that a particular year's worth of balls falls within the same standards as the year before.

Thinking on it, I'm a bit surprised that the MLBPA hasn't pushed for a tighter set of specifications, I would think that players would prefer more certainty year to year.

I read a take to Bet on 32-team expansion occurring by the end of Manfred's expiring contract as the weakest stadium scenarios are addressed, and he'd like some legacy memory aside from we fiddled with the ball, didn't punish the Yankees and took plea bargains from all those Astros players (sorry, Jeff Luhnow), etc.

Watch out Mike Elias for that 2027 expansion draft.

I'd settle for can he guide baseball through getting a CBA done in any kind of decent order.

[dystopia]

26 minutes ago, Spy Fox said:

Whose running theory is that and is there any evidence supporting that as a reason for the variation?

Pete Alonso said it publicly. I’m sure a lot of players discuss it privately as well. 
 

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/mlb/allstar/2021/06/09/pete-alonso-mets-foreign-subtances-mlb-free-agency/7626745002/

I don’t know how much evidence there is for it, you’d have to go back through the FA classes and league wide offensive outputs each year. I certainly wouldn’t have any trouble believing it given how greedy owners are though.  

[RVAOsFan]

I am not as big of a stat guy as a lot of posters on here, but wouldn't looking at exit velo be a better way to judge the baseball than homeruns? Just a thought.  I was surprised to see that Mountcastle ball get over the wall in left last night, thats impressive this early in the season. 

[Can_of_corn]

1 minute ago, RVAOsFan said:

I am not as big of a stat guy as a lot of posters on here, but wouldn't looking at exit velo be a better way to judge the baseball than homeruns? Just a thought.  I was surprised to see that Mountcastle ball get over the wall in left last night, thats impressive this early in the season. 

Better way to judge the baseball is waiting for the guys that track this sort of thing to get enough to cut open and test.

[interloper]

This is a wait and see thing for sure. 

Per Frobby's post, it looks like home runs are still down from last year's average, but it's a tiny sample in a cold part of the season. 

Anecdotally, it's taken much less time for a couple players to conquer the wall, but again, that tells us almost nothing. 

Edited April 2 by interloper

[Sanfran327]

We are leading MLB in team HRs, but the ball is FLYING out of the yard this year IMO. I still stipulate that we typically don't see this sort of action until early May, particularly with the LF wall, but maybe my memory is not serving me in this instance.