MLB Has Possibly (Definitely) Changed the Baseballs Again

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As someone who watches at least one Major League Baseball game every day, it is apparent that the balls have been secretly changed once again. I guess watching teams hit a bunch of home runs last season was too cool and exciting, so we need to deaden the balls for a couple years until we get tired of that and switch back again.

It's sheer insanity that this has happened now three or four times in the last five years or so and everyone is just left to guess what the baseballs are going to be like from season to season. In no other sport does this nonsense take place. If the NFL made its footballs 5 percent larger this season and didn't tell anyone, the outrage that would happen when that eventually came to light would be immeasurable. And yet MLB does it all the time and everybody just kind of accepts it.

In one game the other day, the Braves hit three flyouts that had an average exit velocity of 103 MPH and launch angle of 30 degrees and none of them went farther than 379 feet. Here's what that kind of contact is supposed to look like:

A 75 percent chance each of those balls is a home run would mean there's a 98 percent chance at least one of them should have left the yard, yet none of them even reached 380 feet. Tell me why that might be, Rob Manfraud.

The good news, I guess, is that the composition of the baseballs doesn't affect literally every aspect of the game and how billion-dollar organizations have constructed their teams. Good stuff, guys.