M.L.B. Sends Message: Pitchers, Not Baseballs, Must Adapt

SAN DIEGO — Chris Young played basketball at Princeton, pitched for 13 seasons in the major leagues and is the son-in-law of Dick Patrick, the president of the Washington Capitals. So Young knows plenty about athleticism and how elite athletes adapt to changes in their environment. Home run rates in baseball have spiked, he believes, because hitters recognize that the current generation of balls seem engineered to soar.

“These are highly refined and skilled athletes who have incredible abilities to make adjustments on a daily basis,” Young, now a vice president for Major League Baseball, said at a news conference at the winter meetings on Wednesday. “Certainly they adjust to the circumstances and the conditions of the equipment.”

Young was speaking as a member of an eight-person committee that conducted another league-commissioned study on the properties of several years of curiously lively baseballs. The panel included four university professors, two M.L.B. officials and two top executives for Rawlings, which has manufactured balls since 1977 and is now effectively owned by the league.

Major league hitters set a record for home runs last season with 6,776 — a staggering 2,590 more than they hit in 2014. The surge began in the second half of 2015, fueling an era of unprecedented power: four of the top five home-run rates in major league history have come in the last five seasons.

Source: The New York Times

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