Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
February 15, 2008
High End Balls

Tom Tango looks at the reasons for the increase in home runs from 1993 on, and comes down on the ball. It's important to know that the ball is not technically juiced, but is manufactured at the high end of the allowable range. My theory (which I could never get ESPN to pursue) was that there was a change in manufacturing practices that produced a more consistent ball. That consistency was set at the high end.

My guess is that under older manufacturing techniques, hundreds of thousands of balls were manufactured before they were tested. I'm guessing as time went on, these balls became looser, and overall the balls tended to fall in the mid range of the specification. With the introduction of control charts into US manufacturing in the late 1980s, however, testing is done every 100 balls or so, and the second they get a little out of whack, the process is corrected. I talked to the manufacturer in 1993, and they told me at that time they were producing the most consistent ball ever. What they needed to do, however, was produce the mid-range ball, not the high range ball.


Posted by David Pinto at 07:30 AM | Sluggers | TrackBack (0)
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