In an excellent article by Bradford William Davis of Business Insider, he detailed how MLB knowingly used two different baseballs last season. The article had data from Meredith Willis detailing the two different baseballs and their impact on offense.

One of the balls was the heavily criticized one which led to the abundance of homers. The other ball was far more difficult to hit out, and as explained, it was the way almost to a fault.

What’s interesting there was this summer MLB wanted the world to know it was pitchers who were to blame for the decreased offense. At the time of the announcement MLB offenses had an all-time low .236 batting average.

Despite being fully aware of the changed ball, MLB said it was pitchers using foreign substances like spider tack. This led to much negative coverage of the sport, awkward press conferences, and the absurd theatre which was the foreign substance check.

First day of MLB’s foreign substance rule:

The umpires pull Jacob deGrom and check his glove.#Mets #MLB pic.twitter.com/knGls86vSw

— Ari Alexander (@AriA1exander) June 21, 2021

That was what we were all led to believe. It was the pitchers. Oh, and the checks were working because offense did go up after the new policy.

Now, we know it was all a farce. MLB was really trying to get away with mixing up the balls, perhaps, even using the old ones to make it look like their enforcement efforts were working.

This is just another example of how MLB has operated under Rob Manfred. They lie and deceive players in the fans as to both what they’re doing and who is to blame for what is happening in the game.