Chaos: There is a Report That Says The Baseballs Used In The MLB Postseason Are Completely Different And No Longer Juiced

Folks we have some chaos on our hands. If you've watched this year's MLB regular season and this year's MLB postseason you should be able to notice a difference. Home runs. There's been virtually none hit in October compared to what we saw March through September. The biggest storyline in 2019 was the complaints from pitchers that the baseball was different. Home run numbers were up like we've never seen before. The Twins (307), Yankees (306), Dodgers (288), and Astros (279) all broke the all-time team home run record, set last year by the Yankees at 267, contrary to what WSD will tell you. 6,776 balls were hit out of the park, which broke the league record by 671. FOURTEEN teams set their franchise record. You get it. The ball was altered to cause this and make the game exciting and high scoring. Pitchers all over from Justin Verlander to Noah Syndergaard complained. Well, what has happened in October?

According to the eye test and this study done by Baseball Prospectus' Rob Arthur, we're back to non-juiced balls, or at least a way less juiced version. Chaos! I won't pretend to know what that graph in the first tweet means, but it apparently shows the ball is flying way less than years past. Arthur says that we've seen about 50% fewer homers than expected! That's actually nuts. Rob Manfred is a goddamn maniac to do this in October after pitchers spent all season adjusting to the super juiced ball.

Now I guess they didn't change the balls out for Kershaw last night, but for the most part we've seen a significant change in how these baseball games are being played. I mean just look at Game 3 of the ALDS between the Yankees and Twins: 5-1

In the three games played at Target Field in late July between Minnesota and New York there were a combined 57 runs scored between the two. Practically every ball that was hit in the air was out of the park. There were TWENTY (20) homers hit in three games. It was nuts. On Monday there were a handful of balls that looked gone off the bat that were caught at the track. Only three left the ball park. This deception could be in part because the camera man was a fucking mad man and pointed to the sky on everything, but this study definitely backs up that balls just aren't close to as juiced as they were in the regular season.

What's this mean moving forward? I guess we're going to see some pitching duels. I think the Yankees will blast away no matter what, but this could favor a guy like Masahiro Tanaka who all year had trouble finding his new splitter grip. Maybe he can revert back to his old one and feel really comfortable out there. He certainly looked good in Game 2 at Yankee Stadium.

Bottom line, Rob Manfred is a maniac and changing the ball just for October is straight up lunacy. We have ourselves some October chaos.