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MLB Reportedly Making Changes to Baseballs to Control Home Run Rate

Timothy RappFeb 8, 2021

Major League Baseball will reportedly tweak the baseballs used this season in an effort to curb home run rates.

According to Eno Sarris and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic, "the ball's construction will change slightly, and five more teams are adding humidors for ball storage—all parts of MLB's attempt to reduce the wild recent year-to-year swings in home run rates league-wide."

In a league memo sent to general managers, assistant general managers and equipment managers, Major League Baseball reportedly wrote that the upcoming changes would slightly depress offensive numbers in 2021.

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The Athletic noted that the upcoming changes to the ball should make it "less bouncy." One analyst estimated that the changes would reduce home run rates by five percent.

"It'll be like adding five feet of outfield walls to every wall in the big leagues," that analyst told The Athletic.

"It sounds to me as it will result in more ball consistency and a very, very slight deadening of the ball," one general manager told Sarris and Rosenthal.

"People care. It's tough to know what you're going to get, out of both hitters and pitchers," a team consultant added. "Teams are asking: 'When can we get our hands on some of these balls?' So they can get a read on how things will be different."

Teams using humidors should also impact offenses. The teams that utilize them have reportedly seen a 20 percent drop in home run rates, per public analyst Derek Carty.

Between 2014-19, home run totals varied wildly:

2014: 4,186 total homers.
2015: 4,909 total homers.
2016: 5,610 total homers.
2017: 6,105 total homers.
2018: 5,585 total homers.
2019: 6,776 total homers.

MLB appears to be seeking consistency with the upcoming changes. While the game's fundamental shift toward prioritizing strikeouts and homers isn't going to change, it's possible the league can normalize some of the wildly fluctuating power numbers it has seen in the past decade.