What’s next for major league baseball?
That question is not to be confused with what’s to come for Major League Baseball, whose owners are widely expected to lock out players when the collective bargaining agreement expires on Dec. 2. Instead, the question relates to the game’s most fundamental piece of equipment: the ball.
Offense continued its year-long plummet in the early months of 2021. MLB identified a contributing culprit: pitchers using sticky substances such as Spider Tack to increase spin for the purposes of turning the baseball into a Wiffle ball released from a rocket launcher.
In an effort to tilt the playing field back a bit toward hitters, owners voted on June 3 to have umpires actively enforce the ban on foreign substances, with regular policing beginning June 21. The decision had a clear effect.
Spin rates declined, with a drop of roughly 50 revolutions per minute on four-seam fastballs between June 4-20 and another dip of about 40 RPMs with the official start of enforcement.
After the All-Star break, players, teams, and coaches often noted behaviors — pitchers wiping their hands on parts of their body that umpires weren’t inspecting, whether through their hair or their thigh or their ear — that raised suspicion.
Several Red Sox likewise expressed concern over Astros starter Framber Valdez repeatedly rubbing his temple before every pitch in Game 5 of the ALCS — an outing in which his stuff was significantly improved from his Game 1 performance.
Beyond such observations, there was also data. Spin rates crept back up in the second half of the season and jumped significantly for some pitchers who almost completely recovered the hundreds of RPMs they’d lost after enforcement began.
The average four-seam fastball in September was 93.8 miles per hour and 2,263 RPMs — almost identical to the 93.9 m.p.h. and 2,269 RPMs of an average four-seamer between June 4 and June 20, the pre-enforcement period during which some pitchers complied with the foreign-substances ban and others hadn’t.
So, did the league achieve its intended goal through enforcement?
MLB is also trying to offer pitchers a baseball that’s easier to grip. In the Arizona Fall League, balls have been rubbed with a non-mud substance that has received favorable reviews for its tackiness.
Commissioner Rob Manfred said Thursday that MLB is encouraged by the feedback it’s gotten. It’s possible MLB will be ready to test the balls in spring training, with a chance that they could be employed as soon as next year.