The New MLB Baseball

[bpj]

Trying to see how much the new ball actually affected players this year.

In 2022 there were 51 players with 300+ PA with an OPS of .800 or above.
In 2021 there were 81 players with 300+ PA with an OPS of .800 or above.

That's a decrease of 37% YOY

In 2022 there were 168 players with an OPS of .700 or above (out of 277)
In 2021 there were 196 players with an OPS of .700 or above (out of 262)

In 2022 there were 23 players with 30+ HR
In 2021 there were 43 players with 30+ HR

A decrease of 47%

In 2022 there were 45 players with 25+ HR
In 2021 there were 70 players with 25+ HR

A decrease of 36%

In 2022 there were 71 players with 20+ HR
In 2021 there were 102 players with 20+ HR

A decrease of 30%

MLB changing to the mush ball turned good players into average players and average players into meh players.

https://www.fangraphs.com/leaders.aspx? ... &sort=23,d

They even stopped letting pitchers use sticky substances and the offensive numbers still dropped drastically when you'd expect hitters to do better once the pitchers advantage was taken away.

The ball's gotta go.

[Juliooooo]

Winker would have been a much better player with a normal ball. Good ball, no shift, he's a decent bat. Not .900 OPS, but could be .840-.850 in safety. No idea if the locker room stuff is overblown or not, and he sucks in LF, but if they go into the season with him at DH, it won't be the worst thing. Can always make a trade if needed.

Now, will they change the ball or not, and which of our pitchers does that hurt the most?

[bpj]

One thing this brought to mind was that in the first half of 2021 there were discussions that the weak ball was used in the first half of the season but abandoned in the 2nd half of the season because offense suffered so bad the first half.

My guess is they waited until 2022 so they could ban spider tack thinking that would level the playing field. It did not.

So, I went back to 2019 to check if there was a difference and its pretty eye opening. Then, I went back another year, 2018, and it's at lower levels again. I'm stumped. Maybe they've been testing balls yearly and 2019 was obviously spun too tight or something.


In 2022 there were 51 players with an OPS of .800 or above.
In 2021 there were 81 players with an OPS of .800 or above.
In 2019 there were 114 players with an OPS of .800 or above.
In 2018 there were 84 players with an OPS of. 800 or above.

In 2022 there were 23 players with 30+ HR
In 2021 there were 43 players with 30+ HR
In 2019 there were 58 players with 30+ HR
In 2018 there were 27 players with 30+ HR

In 2022 there were 45 players with 25+ HR
In 2021 there were 70 players with 25+ HR
In 2019 there were 80 players with 25+ HR
In 2018 there were 48 players with 25+ HR


In 2022 there were 71 players with 20+ HR
In 2021 there were 102 players with 20+ HR
In 2019 there were 128 players with 20+ HR
In 2018 there were 100 players with 20+ HR