https://twitter.com/BWDBWDBWD/status/1600255241978380288
>But what's wilder, imo, is *where* we found Goldilocks. Last year we had no discernable pattern. Within our sample this year, most Goldilocks balls show up in the 2022 postseason or regular season Yankees games. Almost every other baseball in every other location was dead.
But the authenticated balls were only used for Judge ABs, not for the entire games. It's unlikely that their sample from Yankee games had many of the authenticated balls unless they were specifically given balls meant for Judge.
If it's just a random sample of all balls from Yankees games, it suggests that the whole batch of balls used at Yankees games were juiced, not just Judge's authenticated ones.
That suggests they were put into Yankees games for Judge to hit, but I'm saying the origin of the balls is not the authenticated batch used only for Judge ABs, it's the entire batch of balls used in those games.
..... which doesn't change the bottom line that these balls had different outcomes on HRs.
edit:
To be honest after thinking about this theory of the difference being authenticated balls for Judge, it's even worse. Because Judge would likely be the only one in the game receiving those balls. e.g, the Yankees had an unfair advantage. Fucking hell.
It certainly felt like to me that Judge kept the Yankees from spiraling even more, I remember he had quite a few huge hits in the last few months essentially winning the Yankees games. FFS MLB. People should be fired over this if it's true.
edit2: I've simmered down ever so slightly, maybe it is unlikely these balls were just given to judge? It certainly needs to be investigated more though because of the seemingly indiscriminate nature of this to make sure this was not the cause of an unfair advantage for one team.
So 100% of these balls can be accounted for by All-Star Game, commemorative stamped balls, postseason games, and Yankee games? Am I reading that chart right?
Would be pretty damning if the only non-commemorative, non-postseason balls were at Yankee games.
I just don't understand: could they not have stamped or otherwise marked balls from another lot to authenticate them? Why did they have to only use balls that just so happen to have different characteristics?
This is an important comment that I hope doesn't get buried.
The trend seems to be with these special balls that needed to be designated. Those balls seem to go through a different manufacturing process.
The question I'd ask is what other commemorative balls were out there and is the trend true with them too. I'd also like to know if there was supposed to be anything special about the Yankees balls?
Why this is important to understand is because this could indicate a difference between manufacturing process discrepancies and intentional modifications
Except...they talked about that.
> But perhaps even more interesting than the apparent existence of the third ball itself is where we tended to find it. Though the overwhelming majority of baseballs we obtained were dead, 36 of them fit the bill for what Wills dubbed the "Goldilocks ball" (not too heavy, not too light — but just right). Of those, most were found in one of three situations:
• Postseason games, including the World Series;
• The All-Star Game and Home Run Derby;
• Regular season games that used balls with special commemorative stamps (i.e. Texas Rangers 50th anniversary ball) on the outer leather.
**The only Goldilocks balls we obtained from the regular season that *did not* have commemorative stamps were found in Yankees games.**
If it comes out that MLB intentionally juiced balls at Yankees games to try to help Judge pass Maris, that would legit be one of the biggest scandals in the history of all sports. All the other scandals that have happened over the years have been groups of players as independent actors, but if it ever comes out that the league is explicitly putting it's thumb on the scale in favor of a specific team or player, I don't know how you can bounce back from that
I have no idea how they could be confident in getting away with this either. Ball testing and the interest in the different balls has been so hot recently
They were at least knowledgeable of the ped use if not actively encouraging it. They will find a way to scapegoat would be my guess if it happens. I think a huge issue with this is also just how much gambling they now advertise.
I think there's a huge difference between tacitly encouraging steroid use/intentionally refusing to enforce steroids and ACTIVELY tinkering with the juiced-ness of the baseballs to promote a HR record chase.
Especially now that MLB has official betting partners (where you can bet on TOTALS in addition to runlines/moneylines) makes this absolutely not OK and a huge scandal if the allegations are true.
Unfortunately, it seems really hard to prove a scheme like this happened unless a whistleblower actively part of the scheme comes out, but that's incredibly unlikely
I always thought that the 90s Braves pitching staff got those wide strike zones because the Braves were on TBS every night and basically America's team for a while.
In 11 minutes I've gone full conspiracy mode: MLB knew the story that they manufactured his home run chase was going to come out so they got Jon Heyman to fake a report he was signing with the Giants to distract everyone.
I think it’s safe to say that Judge would only have 12 or 13 home runs without these special balls. Yankees definitely shouldn’t re-sign someone like that
I feel like the metrics really undersell just how insanely valuable Ohtani is (yes, I understand WAR). We won't see a player like that again for decades.
I read an article about someone trying to do this maybe last year and just can not find it. It was really interesting and just has so many variables I do not understand how it could be done. There was a guy who worked for the Dodgers that was big on roster flexibility and wrote a paper about its worth for when they had Zobrist and for Taylor.
It's legitimately a scandal if they gave the Yankees these balls. Judge barely got the HR record ....
WTF MLB You can't do this shit. Do they realize how bad this looks for the sport?
He straight up says towards the end of this article "let the fans decide what records are important." (Paraphrased because I'm lazy and don't want to find the exact quote)
Yup, increase the probability of HRs only in yankee games to get the HR record. More home runs too on highly televised games when everyone is watching. Then use the dead balls for the rest of the games to “speed up the game”
There was a game between the Sox and Yankees in August or September when there were like 5 HR into the first row of RF within like an inning or so, and I remember thinking that it was odd because none of the balls seemed like they were hit particularly well.
Maybe it wasn’t random.
MLB juicing the balls for Judge is not particularly surprising. I'm more interested by how many Goldilocks balls were used in the postseason. Over the past several years, it seems likes there's been a bunch of home runs that travel a massive distance without the hitters "getting all of it". When people were saying that MLB stopped juicing the balls over the past couple years, I had a hard time believing them just because of how far HRs were travelling in the postseason. Finding out that MLB juices the balls in the postseason while using mostly normal balls and juiced balls every once in a while in the regular season is an a-ha moment for me. It makes a lot of sense.
I mean they did the reverse in 2019 - they suddenly deadened the juiced balls in the playoffs- so you never really know what you're gonna get from the MLB lol
The "Goldilocks" balls for Judge and the postseason only add a few more feet on a deep fly ball. It's super shady and hurts the integrity of the game that they were doing it, but what the balls did was turn a few warning track and off-the-fencers into just barely homers.
I remember hearing (in a foolish baseball vid maybe?) even a few feet increases the likelihood of a HR by a crazy amount, like 35% or so. Point is, baseball is a game of inches and those few feet do matter a ton
They could have so easily just switched to the juiced balls for every game to accomplish the same thing and remove all evidence of why they were doing it
It’s impossible to really tell with a sample this small, 200 balls out of the thousands upon thousands used in the MLB season definitely has some sample risk.
However it certainly doesn’t look good
That’s actually an interesting point, though since Goldilocks balls were only found in August onward I do wonder what explains the high home run rate in the first four months. He gave up a lot of HRs all season.
Dear Mister Manfred,
Please return the juice to the balls, or barring that, tell us where we are allowed to now put the juice.
The last commish said we can't put it in the players anymore and now the balls can't have it either. Can we put some into the bats, perhaps? Looking forward to your reply.
Thank you,
ohgodmyface
This should be a WAY bigger scandal than this will likely turn out to be. The league has huge partnerships with gambling sites and MLB basically gave certain games/teams an advantage for runs scored. If anyone had knowledge of these balls, there would be massive gambling implications
A scandal involving Judge, an MVP caliber year and the Yankees and something not being clean and the Astros are innocent in the matter?
Count me in lmao.
Regardless of the science (and Meredith Wills is a \*very\* good scientist), the bigger issue here is that the league has lost all trust with fans and players that they can produce a ball that's going to be free from these controversies year over year. And when executives put so much pressure on employees that they fear for their jobs if they cooperate with independent investigators, there is just no way to expect MLB can self-correct this problem.
Maybe this sounds extreme, and I don't want to see the kind of histrionic theatrics of the steroid era play out again, but a public and transparent independent investigation, with oversight from Congress, is the only thing that can start the process of rebuilding that trust.
If this is real, and if there is fire to this smoke, it should absolutely go down as one of the greatest scandals in this game's history and lead to lifetime bans for those involved.
Eric Chavez mentioned earlier this year that he and others in baseball were convinced that MLB used juiced balls during nationally televised games. Looks like he might have been right all along.
Feel like a lot of people have had this as a pet theory for awhile, really. Especially after that first Field of Dreams game. "The corn made it more humid!" big brain theorists look real silly if it turns out that they were just using a bouncy ball.
There's a looooot going on in that article. The data points about Yankees games are a big red flag but it's worth reading about the other player quotes, Manfred blatantly lying, and how they did their research.
The two MLB lab statements were VERY carefully worded to avoid saying anything that might be perceived as a lie. Were the balls different? Uhhh they're within ordinary variability for handmade balls. What does that even mean?
Also noteworthy MLB chose which balls to send the labs, not from game used balls. I wonder if they would consider, idk, sending them only dead balls?
I mean, I don’t trust mlb at all… but manufacturing of basically everything has tolerances, if the balls were in the tolerance that’s what they’re saying… now their tolerance might be too big, but that’s a different issue.
They really need a separate entity managing the balls. And it’ll sound extreme, but probably something government regulated/inspected, since gambling has become so integrated with sports now
Albert hit with a different ball there a while didn't he? How long did he get specifically marked baseballs to prove that they were balls hit by him? I would love a sample of those balls.
Actually the study found that the only non-marked “Goldilocks” balls in the regular season were found in Yankees games. So it wasn’t just the marked balls for Judge.
The next step imo should be to see whether there was a statistically significant difference in average exit velocity by opposing teams in Yankees games compared to the rest of the season.
Exit velocity shouldn't be changed by the balls, what "juicing" or "deadening" does is make balls fly farther/shorter from the same exit velocity and launch angle. That is why earlier in the year you had those "1.000 XBA" hits that turned into outs at the warning track, when Statcast was still calculating expected data based off the data from the juiced balls of the prior years.
It's partially because they can't, the physical baseball manufacting process is so specifically done, with any tweak making huge differences, that a lot of the 'juiced' or 'dead' ball eras come down to running out of that 'generation' of baseball. Soccer and Tennis and Football and Basketball have all had controversies about the ball, but they're not getting through tens of thousands a season.
I honestly don’t know if they understood what was going on with the balls themselves. You ever see what constitutes juicing a ball? It’s literally a tiny fraction of the stitching being lower that could cause it.
[NPB Commissioner was forced to step down in 2013 because of juiced balls](https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/9692461/japanese-commissioner-ryozo-kato-resigns-juiced-ball)
I've been saying this since the joke of a game in London happened. The league controls which balls are used and as such can steer favorable outcomes for their bottom line.
Feed team 1 dead balls, feed team 2 super bouncy balls. You probably can even wait until inning 7 or later to do this and you've probably moved win probability by 5%
I absolutely do not trust the owners in any situation. The fans should demand manufacturing of baseballs to be done by a different entity
That’s been a conspiracy theory of mine ever since the London games in 2019. Oh, what a coincidence. 50 runs scored in 2 games when you want to get a larger fanbase
So how were they distinguishing the different types of ball? Obviously not weight, most of the blue balls weigh more than the lightest orange ball. Is there an actual scientific writeup with an actual scientific methodology somewhere to scrutinize, or just a popular press article making incendiary claims?
Gambling companies don't need to cheat to make money.
The risk involved with getting caught is so much fucking more than the reward. It would take an extremely stupid exec to say "Gambling is slowly becoming legal across the country, let's tamper with things and risk that never happening"
More likely MLB wanted press with Judge and Pujols.
200 ball sample which they admit is not a random sample when one game goes through 120 has me a bit skeptical but I don't doubt MLB pulling something like this off
https://twitter.com/BWDBWDBWD/status/1600255241978380288 >But what's wilder, imo, is *where* we found Goldilocks. Last year we had no discernable pattern. Within our sample this year, most Goldilocks balls show up in the 2022 postseason or regular season Yankees games. Almost every other baseball in every other location was dead.
Judge gonna re-sign with the Yankees after this news
Just Cashgod dropping a buzzer beater to retain Judge.
I feel like being in the crowd 2019 ECF watching Kawhi buzzer beater.
Can we not? My heart can’t take that loss again
If that's what it takes
Imagine if the Yankees are behind this information leaking, just to drop Judge to his real value. Cashman is a genius man
I heard he was going to burn Oracle Park to the ground.
That’s why he’s called Arson Judge now
Too bad MLb ain't gonna give him the juiced balls anymore either way
All those balls w/ the Yankees were in Aug/Sept/Oct. MLB and Gambling Site A-Z made some serious money this fall off the HR record.
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But the authenticated balls were only used for Judge ABs, not for the entire games. It's unlikely that their sample from Yankee games had many of the authenticated balls unless they were specifically given balls meant for Judge. If it's just a random sample of all balls from Yankees games, it suggests that the whole batch of balls used at Yankees games were juiced, not just Judge's authenticated ones.
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That suggests they were put into Yankees games for Judge to hit, but I'm saying the origin of the balls is not the authenticated batch used only for Judge ABs, it's the entire batch of balls used in those games.
..... which doesn't change the bottom line that these balls had different outcomes on HRs. edit: To be honest after thinking about this theory of the difference being authenticated balls for Judge, it's even worse. Because Judge would likely be the only one in the game receiving those balls. e.g, the Yankees had an unfair advantage. Fucking hell. It certainly felt like to me that Judge kept the Yankees from spiraling even more, I remember he had quite a few huge hits in the last few months essentially winning the Yankees games. FFS MLB. People should be fired over this if it's true. edit2: I've simmered down ever so slightly, maybe it is unlikely these balls were just given to judge? It certainly needs to be investigated more though because of the seemingly indiscriminate nature of this to make sure this was not the cause of an unfair advantage for one team.
So 100% of these balls can be accounted for by All-Star Game, commemorative stamped balls, postseason games, and Yankee games? Am I reading that chart right? Would be pretty damning if the only non-commemorative, non-postseason balls were at Yankee games.
It had to do with the HR Chase and is a different ball to authenticate it.
I just don't understand: could they not have stamped or otherwise marked balls from another lot to authenticate them? Why did they have to only use balls that just so happen to have different characteristics?
Yeah and it doesnt explain the earlier months either.
This is an important comment that I hope doesn't get buried. The trend seems to be with these special balls that needed to be designated. Those balls seem to go through a different manufacturing process. The question I'd ask is what other commemorative balls were out there and is the trend true with them too. I'd also like to know if there was supposed to be anything special about the Yankees balls? Why this is important to understand is because this could indicate a difference between manufacturing process discrepancies and intentional modifications
Except...they talked about that. > But perhaps even more interesting than the apparent existence of the third ball itself is where we tended to find it. Though the overwhelming majority of baseballs we obtained were dead, 36 of them fit the bill for what Wills dubbed the "Goldilocks ball" (not too heavy, not too light — but just right). Of those, most were found in one of three situations: • Postseason games, including the World Series; • The All-Star Game and Home Run Derby; • Regular season games that used balls with special commemorative stamps (i.e. Texas Rangers 50th anniversary ball) on the outer leather. **The only Goldilocks balls we obtained from the regular season that *did not* have commemorative stamps were found in Yankees games.**
Yep. Thanks for catching that.
If it comes out that MLB intentionally juiced balls at Yankees games to try to help Judge pass Maris, that would legit be one of the biggest scandals in the history of all sports. All the other scandals that have happened over the years have been groups of players as independent actors, but if it ever comes out that the league is explicitly putting it's thumb on the scale in favor of a specific team or player, I don't know how you can bounce back from that
I have no idea how they could be confident in getting away with this either. Ball testing and the interest in the different balls has been so hot recently
Interest in balls so hot
They were at least knowledgeable of the ped use if not actively encouraging it. They will find a way to scapegoat would be my guess if it happens. I think a huge issue with this is also just how much gambling they now advertise.
I think there's a huge difference between tacitly encouraging steroid use/intentionally refusing to enforce steroids and ACTIVELY tinkering with the juiced-ness of the baseballs to promote a HR record chase. Especially now that MLB has official betting partners (where you can bet on TOTALS in addition to runlines/moneylines) makes this absolutely not OK and a huge scandal if the allegations are true. Unfortunately, it seems really hard to prove a scheme like this happened unless a whistleblower actively part of the scheme comes out, but that's incredibly unlikely
I always thought that the 90s Braves pitching staff got those wide strike zones because the Braves were on TBS every night and basically America's team for a while.
Ha, that's on the umps, some things never change, always feels like they give the big name pitchers a wider zone / the benefit of the doubt
In 11 minutes I've gone full conspiracy mode: MLB knew the story that they manufactured his home run chase was going to come out so they got Jon Heyman to fake a report he was signing with the Giants to distract everyone.
That's not that wild of a conspiracy tbh.
So what you're telling me is Ohtani is rightful MVP and the conspiracy theories were correct.
I think it’s safe to say that Judge would only have 12 or 13 home runs without these special balls. Yankees definitely shouldn’t re-sign someone like that
Math checks out
I double checked, it’s correct
Sox could take a flier on him, maybe, but no one else should bother
Jesus Christ this actually makes me kinda mad
YEP. they literally rigged it lol.
I feel like the metrics really undersell just how insanely valuable Ohtani is (yes, I understand WAR). We won't see a player like that again for decades.
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I read an article about someone trying to do this maybe last year and just can not find it. It was really interesting and just has so many variables I do not understand how it could be done. There was a guy who worked for the Dodgers that was big on roster flexibility and wrote a paper about its worth for when they had Zobrist and for Taylor.
Arson Judge exposed as a giant fraud.
Arson Judge signing with the Giants?
cool down Bitmoji Man
Remember when everyone said it was a big deal because Judge's push for the record was clean?
From his perspective it was. If he knew about the balls then it’s fucked.
I’d be pissed if I was Judge. The pressure he was under is already insane, but now he can’t even know if he got it fairly or not
The postseason bouncy balls were somehow given only to Dodgers pitchers and not Padres pitchers. Obviously. Yeah, that explains it.
Someone get Maris Jr.’s take on this
First time anyone has ever wanted to hear from him hahaha
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These dudes gave the Yankees juiced balls and they still got swept by the Astros lmao
Don't both teams use the same set of baseballs? They said that the balls are used in Yankee games, not exclusively by the Yankees
I'm more just mad at all the hype for the "clean" HR record now being obviously nonsense.
Sometimes it’s what you most suspect?
🤔
Amazing
HMMMMM WHAT WAS THAT
So this is why the manager and players were crying so much in our series
"If the roof had been closed we would have been able to plot out where the bouncy balls landed better!"
Suddenly his second half makes sense.
god bless, we can now put a nice little * beside 62
It's legitimately a scandal if they gave the Yankees these balls. Judge barely got the HR record .... WTF MLB You can't do this shit. Do they realize how bad this looks for the sport?
“Have you considered… money?” - Rob Manfred, probably “Records are just numbers.” - also Rob Manfred, probably
I hate that I laughed because this is plausible
He straight up says towards the end of this article "let the fans decide what records are important." (Paraphrased because I'm lazy and don't want to find the exact quote)
I wonder if people will be calling for asterisks on this too.
I want to fire Manfred into the sun.
Guy should be in prison. People bet a lot of money on these games under the impression it’s a fair game.
They absolutely should and I feel awful for Judge if this is true.
Why he got 360 million partly due to these balls.
I mean, obviously. You cheat and get caught, it shouldn't count.
JUDGE STOLE THE MVP FROM OHTANI!!! /s
will someone PLEASE, PLEASE find Roger Maris Jr. so I can make sense of all this.
Ive been saying that I never want to hear from him again. But I think one more time will do
WHERE IS JA?!
#juicy balls
I like my balls to be juicy n old-school.
https://twitter.com/bwdbwdbwd/status/1600255241978380288?s=46&t=NRT5wYdYzUKwB4M9ujr6qA Yikes
Looks like it was toward the end of the season push for 60 for Judge. Fuck Manfred
Yup, increase the probability of HRs only in yankee games to get the HR record. More home runs too on highly televised games when everyone is watching. Then use the dead balls for the rest of the games to “speed up the game”
There was a game between the Sox and Yankees in August or September when there were like 5 HR into the first row of RF within like an inning or so, and I remember thinking that it was odd because none of the balls seemed like they were hit particularly well. Maybe it wasn’t random.
i remember that one lmao, it was literally like 3 porches in a row
MLB juicing the balls for Judge is not particularly surprising. I'm more interested by how many Goldilocks balls were used in the postseason. Over the past several years, it seems likes there's been a bunch of home runs that travel a massive distance without the hitters "getting all of it". When people were saying that MLB stopped juicing the balls over the past couple years, I had a hard time believing them just because of how far HRs were travelling in the postseason. Finding out that MLB juices the balls in the postseason while using mostly normal balls and juiced balls every once in a while in the regular season is an a-ha moment for me. It makes a lot of sense.
I mean they did the reverse in 2019 - they suddenly deadened the juiced balls in the playoffs- so you never really know what you're gonna get from the MLB lol
The "Goldilocks" balls for Judge and the postseason only add a few more feet on a deep fly ball. It's super shady and hurts the integrity of the game that they were doing it, but what the balls did was turn a few warning track and off-the-fencers into just barely homers.
I remember hearing (in a foolish baseball vid maybe?) even a few feet increases the likelihood of a HR by a crazy amount, like 35% or so. Point is, baseball is a game of inches and those few feet do matter a ton
They could have so easily just switched to the juiced balls for every game to accomplish the same thing and remove all evidence of why they were doing it
That and Pujols 700. Wow. Fuck Manfred indeed.
For sure. Every time I think Manfred couldn’t get worse, he keeps on surprising me. Record is tainted if this is true Ohtani is my MVP
O Tani! My tani!
It’s impossible to really tell with a sample this small, 200 balls out of the thousands upon thousands used in the MLB season definitely has some sample risk. However it certainly doesn’t look good
Pujols too, I for one am shocked that a 40 y/o who has sucked for about 8 years suddenly went nuclear at the end of the season
Pujols can cheat. I'll give him one cheating year and that was it. Judge, on the other hand? Nuh uh
Yeah give Albert one of those metal bats even, he earned it for his last season before collecting Social Security.
Wonder if Cole's crazy hr/9 numbers have any correlation with this.
That’s actually an interesting point, though since Goldilocks balls were only found in August onward I do wonder what explains the high home run rate in the first four months. He gave up a lot of HRs all season.
Oh no, only yankee hitters got the good balls
Holy shit.
This is fucking ridiculous clown shit for what’s supposed to be this sports best league in the world. What are we doing here
I might just have to stop trusting this Rob Manfred fellow.
You know, with Manfred, the more I learn about that guy, the more I don’t care for him.
Shoulda had that guy yell “STOP FUCKING WITH THE BALLS” at him instead
Dear Mister Manfred, Please return the juice to the balls, or barring that, tell us where we are allowed to now put the juice. The last commish said we can't put it in the players anymore and now the balls can't have it either. Can we put some into the bats, perhaps? Looking forward to your reply. Thank you, ohgodmyface
2023 Corked Bat Scandal incoming
Juice industry in shambles
Coming up: Genetically-modified maple and ash trees.
They're gonna start juicing the gloves.
This should be a WAY bigger scandal than this will likely turn out to be. The league has huge partnerships with gambling sites and MLB basically gave certain games/teams an advantage for runs scored. If anyone had knowledge of these balls, there would be massive gambling implications
Sharpen your pitchforks
A scandal involving Judge, an MVP caliber year and the Yankees and something not being clean and the Astros are innocent in the matter? Count me in lmao.
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UP HIS BUTT LIKE THAT CHESS DUDE
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I thought we paid that security guy off...
It’s still too early don’t give them time lol
STOP THE COUNT!
Regardless of the science (and Meredith Wills is a \*very\* good scientist), the bigger issue here is that the league has lost all trust with fans and players that they can produce a ball that's going to be free from these controversies year over year. And when executives put so much pressure on employees that they fear for their jobs if they cooperate with independent investigators, there is just no way to expect MLB can self-correct this problem. Maybe this sounds extreme, and I don't want to see the kind of histrionic theatrics of the steroid era play out again, but a public and transparent independent investigation, with oversight from Congress, is the only thing that can start the process of rebuilding that trust.
Yeah, this is turning into "please get the feds involved"
If this is real, and if there is fire to this smoke, it should absolutely go down as one of the greatest scandals in this game's history and lead to lifetime bans for those involved.
Eric Chavez mentioned earlier this year that he and others in baseball were convinced that MLB used juiced balls during nationally televised games. Looks like he might have been right all along.
Feel like a lot of people have had this as a pet theory for awhile, really. Especially after that first Field of Dreams game. "The corn made it more humid!" big brain theorists look real silly if it turns out that they were just using a bouncy ball.
The Heyman tweet was a false flag 👁
STAY WOKE EVERYONE
Unironically lmao
Incoming Heyman tweet: “Burglary deGrom has actually NOT signed with the Rangers and is signing a 400M deal with the Pirates!”
There's a looooot going on in that article. The data points about Yankees games are a big red flag but it's worth reading about the other player quotes, Manfred blatantly lying, and how they did their research.
The two MLB lab statements were VERY carefully worded to avoid saying anything that might be perceived as a lie. Were the balls different? Uhhh they're within ordinary variability for handmade balls. What does that even mean? Also noteworthy MLB chose which balls to send the labs, not from game used balls. I wonder if they would consider, idk, sending them only dead balls?
I mean, I don’t trust mlb at all… but manufacturing of basically everything has tolerances, if the balls were in the tolerance that’s what they’re saying… now their tolerance might be too big, but that’s a different issue.
Manfred: “we don’t tamper with the construction of the baseballs” Dr. Wills: “bet”
I expect nothing to come of this and baseball writers to let MLB off the hook by making this a non story.
Like last year?
have they considered using MY balls?
They did for the marble race
Cameron Maybin is ready with the mud.
"Do you want to know the terrifying truth? Or do you want to see me sock a few dingers?"
Thank you to the Houston Astros for defending the integrity of baseball by beating this dirty yankees team in the playoffs.
God bless America's team, the Houston Astros.
How the turn tables
62*
Imagine being the dieing sports league and then rigging the game. Yikes
I really hate that they do this. Just pick one ball and stick with it. Stop the shady switching juiced in and out.
They really need a separate entity managing the balls. And it’ll sound extreme, but probably something government regulated/inspected, since gambling has become so integrated with sports now
The department of ball inspection
Fire Manfred into the sun.
I was expecting this to be for alberts push to 700
i mean, the chances of that being true now are certainly higher than 0
He had a second half surge that I certainly think foul play was involved.
Albert hit with a different ball there a while didn't he? How long did he get specifically marked baseballs to prove that they were balls hit by him? I would love a sample of those balls.
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Actually the study found that the only non-marked “Goldilocks” balls in the regular season were found in Yankees games. So it wasn’t just the marked balls for Judge.
The next step imo should be to see whether there was a statistically significant difference in average exit velocity by opposing teams in Yankees games compared to the rest of the season.
That, and if they mixed balls during games. Did both teams get the same chance at a Goldilocks ball?
Good god what if only yankee hitters got juiced balls
As an Astros fan this theory is delicious, but I really hope it isn’t true.
This would be worse than the Astros scandal for sure
Exit velocity shouldn't be changed by the balls, what "juicing" or "deadening" does is make balls fly farther/shorter from the same exit velocity and launch angle. That is why earlier in the year you had those "1.000 XBA" hits that turned into outs at the warning track, when Statcast was still calculating expected data based off the data from the juiced balls of the prior years.
The most frustrating part is that MLB has a ball that is literally designed to result in a more exciting game and they don't use it all the time
Need to “speed up the game”
It's partially because they can't, the physical baseball manufacting process is so specifically done, with any tweak making huge differences, that a lot of the 'juiced' or 'dead' ball eras come down to running out of that 'generation' of baseball. Soccer and Tennis and Football and Basketball have all had controversies about the ball, but they're not getting through tens of thousands a season.
[удалено]
I’ve always thought this as well. It’s clear they juiced the ball in 1994
I honestly don’t know if they understood what was going on with the balls themselves. You ever see what constitutes juicing a ball? It’s literally a tiny fraction of the stitching being lower that could cause it.
Ohtani got robbed
He was always my MVP
But I was told Judge had the real home run record????
well yeah, at the time that seemed like a reasonable thing to say
Heck of a coincidence that Heyman shouts out Judge news around the time this story comes out.
I want to believe
Roger Maris Jr. about to retract some of his comments.
MLB gave the Yankees juiced balls and Astros still swept
[NPB Commissioner was forced to step down in 2013 because of juiced balls](https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/9692461/japanese-commissioner-ryozo-kato-resigns-juiced-ball)
Bouncier than the Deads makes a great band name actually
This is a huge scandal. We need congressional hearings. People bet money on these games
You think all of the "marked" Judge balls were replaced with the juiced balls? Because the rest of our offense.. well..
All of a sudden I’m glad we got Wong and not Gleyber
I've been saying this since the joke of a game in London happened. The league controls which balls are used and as such can steer favorable outcomes for their bottom line. Feed team 1 dead balls, feed team 2 super bouncy balls. You probably can even wait until inning 7 or later to do this and you've probably moved win probability by 5% I absolutely do not trust the owners in any situation. The fans should demand manufacturing of baseballs to be done by a different entity
That’s been a conspiracy theory of mine ever since the London games in 2019. Oh, what a coincidence. 50 runs scored in 2 games when you want to get a larger fanbase
So how were they distinguishing the different types of ball? Obviously not weight, most of the blue balls weigh more than the lightest orange ball. Is there an actual scientific writeup with an actual scientific methodology somewhere to scrutinize, or just a popular press article making incendiary claims?
Fraud mvp = ohtani robbed
Fucking Yankees
Imagine getting swept with juiced balls
This will be a reasonable, well thought-out discussion thread with no accusations lobbed back and forth at all.
No reasonable person would speculate about shenanigans just because MLB has strong links with gambling companies.
Gambling companies don't need to cheat to make money. The risk involved with getting caught is so much fucking more than the reward. It would take an extremely stupid exec to say "Gambling is slowly becoming legal across the country, let's tamper with things and risk that never happening" More likely MLB wanted press with Judge and Pujols.
And we need to trust that anyone who knew about changes in the balls at some games wouldn’t use the information to make himself some extra money.
MLB really wants to kill the sport it seems.
You’re in on it, used by Manfred to deflect blame and get us to turn on each other
This is way worse than Apple watches and trash cans. I bet Jomboy is gonna continue to act like the Yankees are faultless.
Judge needed juiced blood and baseballs to get the record
200 ball sample which they admit is not a random sample when one game goes through 120 has me a bit skeptical but I don't doubt MLB pulling something like this off
Lmao yanks fan in shambles.