This World Series Ball Controversy Is Different, Familiar and Extraordinary

There's an old episode of The Simpsons in which Mark McGwire shows up and addresses a seemingly nefarious Major League Baseball conspiracy by asking: "Do you want to know the terrifying truth, or do you want to see me sock a few dingers?"

This scenario is now playing out in real life in the 2017 World Series.

The clash between the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers has been a wild affair. Games 2 and 5 rank, in particular, among the best World Series games ever played. And with a record 22 home runs at the center of the drama, the long ball has taken its place as the defining feature of this Fall Classic.

The catch is that the balls may not be on the level.

Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated was first to report on claims from players on both teams that the World Series baseballs are different than regular-season balls. They're allegedly slicker and harder to grip, particularly when throwing sliders.

"The World Series ball is slicker. No doubt," Astros ace Justin Verlander told Verducci.

"I had trouble with the ball throwing a slider. It was slicker," Dodgers ace Yu Darvish echoed.

The league has denied this, insisting the only difference is the color of the printing on the balls, which has gone from blue to gold.

But since all this constitutes another layer on the many suspicions and allegations that modern baseballs are juiced, what we have here is a ball controversy that's at once familiar and a horse of its own color.

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A Brief History of Recent Postseason Ball Controversies

Whenever there's a postseason controversy surrounding the actual baseball, it typically has to do with individual pitchers going rogue and doctoring the ball for the benefit of themselves and their teams.

In the 1982 World Series, the St. Louis Cardinals suspected Milwaukee Brewers lefty Mike Caldwell of throwing spitballs. In the 1986 National League Championship Series, the New York Mets accused Astros righty Mike Scott of throwing scuffed balls. In the 2006 and 2013 World Series, Detroit Tigers lefty Kenny Rogers and Boston Red Sox lefty Jon Lester were each accused of using foreign substances on the ball.

Albeit in different ways, spitballs and scuffed balls have unnatural spin and movement. Pitchers who use sticky substances (e.g., pine tar) on the ball typically do so to get better grips and perhaps gain more spin and movement than they might normally feature.

All three doctoring methods are varying degrees of frowned upon but equally against the rules. The four performances referenced above hint at why a pitcher would test these rules. If Caldwell, Scott, Rogers and Lester hadn't thrown 33.2 one-run innings between them, their performances would be lost to history.

As far as ball controversies go, juiced balls are in the same ballpark but on the other side of it. Players can't make it happen, and tangible proof that it is happening is traditionally hard to come by.

But that hasn't stopped juiced ball conspiracy theories from popping up here and there throughout history, including during the 2002 World Series between the Anaheim Angels and San Francisco Giants.

"There's a different feel," Angels closer Troy Percival told Tyler Kepner of the New York Times. "You just can't squeeze the ball. When your arm's throwing a ball 95 to 100 miles an hour, you can feel the compression of the ball. But you're not. It's like throwing a smooth rock."

Of note is that the 2002 World Series' 21 combined home runs held the all-time record before the 2017 World Series came along and broke it.

A New Twist on a 2017 Conspiracy

Speaking of juiced ball complaints, that's what the first ball-related complaint of this World Series was about.

"Obviously, the balls are juiced," Astros ace Dallas Keuchel said after Game 2, according to Bob Nightengale of USA Today. "I think they're juiced 100 percent."

Keuchel wasn't the first player to openly wonder about the ball being juiced this season. The reason for that is simple: The ball has been behaving liked a juiced ball.

There were a record 6,105 home runs hit during the 2017 regular season. As this data from Baseball Reference shows, that's part a long-running upward trend yet also part of a remarkable short-term spike:

While hitters deserve their share of the credit for changing their swings and joining the so-called "Fly-Ball Revolution," the notion that they're taking aim at juiced balls has yet to fade into the background.

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred would prefer that it would. He's repeatedly denied there's anything different about the balls, including in response to Keuchel's allegation after Game 2.

But Verlander had some thoughts on that, per Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times:

Ben Lindbergh and Mitchel Lichtman of The Ringer, for example, found that modern baseballs have smaller circumferences, lower seams and a higher coefficient of restitution (read: "bounciness"). Combined, these things contribute to higher exit speeds and more distance for balls in play.

As far as pitchers are concerned, the difference isn't just evident at the crack of the bat. It's also evident in the mere throwing of the baseball. Most notably, there were gripes about the balls causing blisters.

Slicker versions of these balls would be the insult to go with the injury. Consider the words of Tampa Bay Rays reliever Steve Cishek:

The rub is how hard it is to back up testimonials with evidence. Travis Sawchik of FanGraphs spotted red flags relating to the movement of specific pitches in the World Series, but the big picture is clouded by a laundry list of variables: small sample size, fatigue, weather, mechanical changes and so on.

There is nonetheless enough to sustain suspicions that the World Series balls are making a difference.

Big Differences On and Off the Field

Neither Astros nor Dodgers pitchers have been comfortable throwing secondary pitches at their normal rates. Whereas neither team topped 60 percent fastballs in the long run-up to the World Series, both are over that mark in the World Series.

This could just be random noise. Or, it could be a defense mechanism.

Before the Fall Classic, the Dodgers (.347) and Astros (.343) allowed about the same slugging percentage on secondary pitches. In the World Series, the clubs' secondary pitches are being knocked around to the tune of a .451 slugging percentage.

In short, hitters are getting more fastballs to hit and are seeing secondary offerings that, at least per their results, aren't functioning normally.

On top of all that, the ball may also be carrying more than usual.

MLB's Statcast system assigns hit probabilities to batted balls based on their trajectories (launch angles) and speeds (exit velocities) off the bat. Balls that are most likely to be home runs are hit very hard and high but not too high. Most of the homers hit in the World Series match the description.

There have been more than a few weird ones, however.

In Game 1, Mike Petriello of MLB.com highlighted a Justin Turner homer that had just a 13 percent home run probability:

In Game 5, he highlighted a Yasiel Puig home run that had just a two percent home run probability:

Among the series' 22 homers, these examples are two of eight homers that left the bat with no better than 25 percent odds of clearing a fence. Overall, an average home run from this series has a lower home run probability than average homers from the regular season and preceding postseason games:

Split	AVG HR Shape	HR Probability
Regular Season	28.1º, 103.2 MPH	78%
Pre-WS Postseason	28.4º, 103.1 MPH	78%
World Series	28.1º, 101.9 MPH	71%

Naturally, there are other variables at play.

The sweltering heat of the first two games at Dodger Stadium made for good home run conditions. The next three games were played at Minute Maid Park, which has a comically short left field porch that aided Puig's home run as well as soft shots by Carlos Correa and Alex Bregman.

But no matter how many other variables there are, nothing can erase the possibility that the ball has something to do with how extraordinary this World Series has become. By Mythbusters rules, this doesn't get a "Confirmed" but is worthy of a "Plausible."

If there is something going on, one can't help but feel for the guys on the mound. They already had to navigate a season in which the ball was allegedly juiced out the wazoo. Now they're on baseball's biggest stage and may be dealing with juiced balls that they can't throw normally.

As far as ball controversies go, though, at least there's an element of fairness to this one.

Doctored balls favor only one pitcher and one team. In this instance, everyone is using the same ball. And while pitchers may not like it, well, what goes around comes around. They had every advantage when homers were at a premium in recent seasons. This World Series is the final nail in that coffin.

Besides, baseball is an entertainment product. And on that front, the 2017 World Series is succeeding with flying colors.

The games have been fantastic and the series itself is attracting more and more viewers. According to the Hollywood Reporter, even Game 5's running time of five-plus hours didn't stop it from topping Sunday Night Football. At this rate, the 2017 World Series will be a worthy follow-up to a 2016 World Series that was MLB's most popular Fall Classic in years.

Thus, the answer to The Simpsons-ized Mark McGwire's question: When presented with the terrifying truth or dingers, fans will always choose dingers.

Data courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.