Eric Chavez, the hitting coach for the New York Mets, alleges that Major League Baseball is still using juiced baseballs, but only for high profile, nationally televised games.
The accusation of juiced balls has been bouncing around the league for several years. In 2019, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred formally refuted the claims that the league was sneaking juiced balls to create more home runs and more excitement for the game.
MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred (Bob Levey/Getty Images)
Indeed, suspicion was high in 2019 as MLB players mounted an incredible record of homers that season. And last year, the league was accused of using manipulated balls to keep salaries for free agents down. The questions formed part of the reason for last year’s crackdown on sticky substances used by pitchers.
This year, though, the league’s batting average has tumbled. But not across the board.
Indeed, according to Chavez, balls seem far more lively for nationally televised games than they do for the rest, Newsday reported.
Chavez told the magazine that several players urged him to watch a nationally televised game and compare the behavior of the balls to a local game. And, sure enough, Chavez found that the balls were flying father even when not hit as hard.
Per Newsday:
And then in late April, two days before they played the Phillies on ESPN’s “Sunday Night Baseball,” several hitters gave Chavez a heads up: Watch how the baseballs travel during the premier nationally televised game of the week. They had heard that the balls in those games were in some way different.
“I thought for a second, ‘You guys are full of it,’ ” Chavez said.
But then he said he started paying more attention. He said things became apparent after watching Sunday Night Baseball as the Mets faced the Phillies.
“The ball was traveling farther — balls that weren’t hit as hard. And I’m like, wait a minute, that shouldn’t have happened,” Chavez said he discovered. “The ball was just traveling better. That was the eye test, but then we lined it up with what the analytics were telling us.”
Fans cheer at an Astros-White Sox game in 2021 (Carmen Mandato/Getty Images)
Chavez insisted that other coaches have quietly told him that they agree that there is something fishy going on with the balls.
“This is the one thing about analytics. You can’t really argue, right? You can’t argue. These are facts,” he said. “We’ve been hitting balls 104, 105 [mph] at the right launch angle that aren’t leaving. And all of a sudden, now we’re hitting balls 95 — a little less hard than the other balls — and those balls are traveling on Sunday night.’’
Chavez added, noting that hitting coaches around the majors have heard and said the same: “We can argue other things until you’re blue in the face, but we know that with analytics that if you hit a ball over 100 at the right launch angle, it should be a homer most of the time. That’s telling us there’s something going on.”
MLB has a serious problem with its policies on balls. Chavez’s accusations come on the heels of complaints that wild pitches are hitting more batters after the league banned sticky substances.
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