MLB Addresses 'Issue' With Game Baseballs Amid Tarik Skubal Comments, Rise in HRs

Detroit Tigers' ace Tarik Skubal believes the current batch of MLB baseballs are "doing some weird things." Offense is up around the league, evidence points to drag being down and Rawlings has confirmed a manufacturing defect in half of the balls related to excess oil creating a yellow discoloration.

But MLB's take on the matter has been the staining hasn't contributed to the decrease in drag.

"Rawlings and our scientists do not see any evidence to date that the yellow staining is related to this change in drag," it said in a statement Wednesday, per The Athletic's Eno Sarris and Evan Drellich. "We will continue to monitor the performance of the baseball as the season progresses."

Skubal and the players have taken notice of the different behavior of the baseballs, whatever the cause.

"I don't know if you guys are paying attention to that. They're flying right now," Skubal said last week. "Go look at the numbers and tell me that something's not going on. There's no coincidence."

"You can go down whatever conspiracy theory you want to go down," he added. "Manipulation of balls. Whatever. And you'll probably get nowhere, because there's no accountability on that side of adjusting baseballs, which is interesting, because there seems to be a lot of data out there, suggesting that—especially in 2019—the balls were flying much farther than they used to. Now they're doing it again. I don't quite get it, but I guess I'm not meant to understand."

The major differences have come in June, with The Athletic noting that the homers were hit in 2.8 percent of plate appearances before June vs. an increase to 3.4 percent in June.

"This is the craziest month for drag I've ever seen," a high-ranking research and development analyst for an MLB team told The Athletic.

MLB has acknowledged the change in drag but put it down to a natural variation in performance.

"MLB makes drag data available to the public on Baseball Savant and we are aware of the recent reduction in drag," it said in its statement. "To be clear, there has been no change in the materials or manufacturing process of the baseball. Because the baseball is hand-sewn and is made with natural materials, we expect variation in performance both throughout the season and between seasons."