Justin Verlander: MLB Game Balls 'A F--king Joke,' Used to Generate Offense
One of the conversations surrounding Major League Baseball this season has been whether or not the baseballs are being juiced, contributing to a record-setting pace of home runs.
Count Houston Astros pitcher Justin Verlander among those who clearly feel that commissioner Rob Manfred has sanctioned a juiced ball, as he told Jeff Passan of ESPN:
"It's a f--king joke. Major League Baseball's turning this game into a joke. They own Rawlings, and you've got Manfred up here saying it might be the way they center the pill. They own the f--king company. If any other $40 billion company bought out a $400 million company and the product changed dramatically, it's not a guess as to what happened. We all know what happened. Manfred the first time he came in, what'd he say? He said we want more offense. All of a sudden he comes in, the balls are juiced? It's not coincidence. We're not idiots."
"Yes. 100 percent," Verlander added when asked if he believed the balls were juiced. "They've been using juiced balls in the Home Run Derby forever. They know how to do it. It's not coincidence. I find it really hard to believe that Major League Baseball owns Rawlings and just coincidentally the balls become juiced."
As Passan noted, MLB batters are on pace to club 6,668 home runs this season, which would smash the previous record of 6,105 homers hit two seasons ago.
While pitchers may hate such trends, batters likely don't mind. And Boston's J.D. Martinez wasn't ready to concede that the balls were the only reason for an uptick in homers, also citing smarter hitters.
"It's a power-arm league," he said. "It's either a walk or a strikeout—stuff over command. I think you see a lot more mistakes over the plate. The velocity, the guys trying to hit the ball in the air—I think it's a recipe for home runs."
Manfred and Major League Baseball commissioned a study in 2015 to determine whether the baseballs were playing a part in the increase of home runs in recent years, finding that the balls were behaving differently without elaborating on a reason, as Passan reported. MLB then bought Rawlings in 2018.
Manfred also addressed the issue during an appearance on Golic and Wingo Monday:
"We think what's been going on this year is attributable to the baseball. Our scientists that have been now studying the baseball more regularly have told us that this year the baseball has a little less drag. It doesn't need to change very much in order to produce meaningful change in terms of the way the game is played on the field. We are trying to understand exactly why that happened and build out a manufacturing process that gives us a little more control over what's going on. But you have to remember that our baseball is a handmade product and there's gonna be variation year to year."
While other pitchers have lamented the potential change in the balls, it's fair to wonder if Major League Baseball minds seeing more pitches leave the ballpark. The surge in home runs during the 1990s before the league cracked down on PED use certainly had people paying attention, and in 2018 not one baseball game cracked the list of the top 50 most watched sporting events in the United States.
Even with the NFL and Winter Olympics removed from consideration, the most-watched MLB game last year was Game 5 of the World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Los Angeles Dodgers, which finished ninth on the list behind four college football bowl games, three NBA Finals games and the World Cup Final between France and Croatia.
Home runs, however, add excitement. As Greg Maddux famously once said in a Nike commercial, "Chicks dig the long ball."
Verlander, however, does not.
