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What she found, as published in this fascinating Business Insider expose on Tuesday, is that the MLB used not one, not two, but three different balls over the course of the 2022 MLB season. Wills carefully deconstructed, weighed, and analyzed these balls. She exclusively told Insider that these Goldilocks balls were, on average, 1.5 grams lighter than the "juiced" balls and 1 gram heavier than the "dead" balls that were widely in circulation for the 2022 season.
According to Insider’s Bradford William Davis, Dr. Meredith Wills analyzed 204 game-used balls from the 2022 season. The Society for American Baseball Research award-winning astrophysicist’s research suggested that the league used three different balls throughout the year. Before that, though, I was wandering around FanFest in downtown Kansas City and happened across the Rawlings guys, selling baseballs. Lest they suspect that I'm some sort of muckraking journalist like that guy in the last season of The Wire, I stuff my credential in my back pocket, walk up to a fellow behind a table and say ... Although Palmeiro did not look as big as the other players on the list, Miguel Tejada admitted that he had injected him with steroids. A career 569 home runs and an admission from a teammate that Palmeiro was ‘juiced’ makes him worthy contender for the juiced up derby.
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He said as much Monday night in an interview with ESPN. Long balls, juiced or not, flew out of Progressive Field in this year's Home Run Derby Monday night. In the end, Mets rookie Pete Alonso edged out Blue Jays rookie Vladimir Guerrero Jr.
He became the first player not credibly linked to steroid use to pass Roger Maris' 1961 record. This third ball was found in limited, special events like the All-Star Game, postseason, games using commemorative balls — and at some New York Yankees games. Regular season games that used balls with special commemorative stamps on the outer leather, such as the Rangers’ 50th anniversary ball.
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They don't grow up, because they don't have to. Nice life if you can get it, but you know kids -- they pick up on messages. The baseball season is still young, but the home run is back.

Major League Baseball eventually commissioned a study which determined the ball had an impact on the extreme home run total in 2017. Jan Blachowicz admits Magomed Ankalaev SHOULD be given title in incredible act of sportsmanship... To understand this we need to talk a look at the baseball itself. The furor surrounding the ball centers on, well ...
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Add in what's happening at the Triple-A level, where big-league baseballs are being used, and it's clear what's going on. MLB could help Insider's study by providing information that would help determine which balls were used in specific games but has chosen not to do so. Furthermore, Insider reports that the website was told by a player that one of commissioner Rob Manfred's 'top lieutenants' warned union officials not to allow players to send balls to Wills for third-party testing. Perhaps the most intriguing of all the locations where Goldilocks balls were found was in New York Yankees games.

Although the lake is intensively commercially used you can find there a beautiful nature and even a natural reservation. Watching them flying over the lake was a breathtaking spectacle. He also suffered some lagging injuries that finally cost him about half a season last year.
Correlation might not equal causation, but that’s one hell of a coincidence. The third ball’s weight is, on average "about one-and-a-half grams lighter than the juiced and one gram heavier than the dead." Now, Society for American Baseball Research astrophysicist Meredith Wills, who found that two baseballs were used last year, did research once again on balls accumulated throughout the year and found that a third has entered the mix. However, an Insider study found that, not only were "juiced" balls still in circulation, a third MLB baseball was introduced in 2022. What makes the study even more intriguing — and perhaps shocking to some — is the context that Aaron Judge broke the single-season American League home run record in 2022 with 62 home runs. While three is certainly no definitive study that links Judge’s home-run success in 2022 to the Goldilock ball, Insider’s finding could be enough for fans to make their own wild speculations.
"The 2022 MLB season exclusively used a single ball utilizing the manufacturing process change announced prior to the 2021 season, and all baseballs were well within MLB's specifications," the statement read. "Multiple independent scientific experts have found no evidence of different ball designs. To the contrary, the data show the expected normal manufacturing variation of a handmade natural product." If that came out wrong, we apologize, but you know it, we know it, and the players know it.
Manfred has publicly suggested that the ball is traveling further because of its "improved aerodynamic state." As he sees it, that's because " getting better at centering the pill. It creates less drag." Call GAMBLER. Odds & lines subject to change. "Nope," the fellow said, "they're exactly the same balls."

The issue appeared to be corrected in 2018, when 5,585 home runs were hit. The report also indicates that the "Goldilocks" balls were primarily found in postseason games, the All-Star Game and Home Run Derby when collected. They were also found at Yankee games and commemorative games with specific stamps on them. MLB uses two league-affiliated research labs, one from the University of Washington and another from the University of Massachusetts at Lowell. Both told Insider that they had not found variations in the balls used in 2022 beyond what would be expected for handmade products.
The “Goldilocks” balls were, on average, about 1.5 grams lighter than the “juiced” balls and one gram heavier than the “dead” ones. A May 2018 report to Major League Baseball by professors specializing in physics, mechanical engineering, statistics and mathematics concluded there was less drag on the ball, causing more home runs. MLB still has not figured out why, and Manfred denied accusations by AL all-star starter Justin Verlander and other pitchers that baseballs deliberately had been altered, or "juiced." Balls hit like that haven’t been home runs for decades.
That would be 19% above last year's 5,558 and 9% over the record 6,105 hit in 2017 that topped the Steroids Era high mark of 5,693 in 2000. No doubt,” Astros ace Justin Verlander told SI. The problem, according to pitchers quoted in the piece, is that the slick ball makes it harder to throw a slider, a claim backed up by the beating slider-dependent hurlers Yu Darvish and Ken Giles have taken in this series. The Dodgers and Astros have hit 22 dongs in the series, an all-time record. The Home Run Derby is tonight, and it's the perfect advertisement for baseball.
Manfred himself acknowledged that the baseballs have changed, but attributed the switch to science. It just so happens MLB’s end goal magically surfaced right after buying Rawlings, and this isn’t some in-depth issue either. Some players have been saying the baseballs feel different. Prior to the 2022 All-Star Game, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said two balls were used in 2021 due to an issue with a Rawlings plant in Costa Rica. A "new, lighter, deader ball" was deliberately used.

The scoring boost could be a welcome boon, but not necessarily a plot. Rawlings has been centering the pill more effectively and uniformly in baseballs. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.