Major League Baseball will test another version of a pre-tacked ball in the Double-A Southern League this season, reports Hannah Keyser of Yahoo! Sports. The league has floated the idea of “enhanced grip” baseballs for a few seasons.
Various iterations of pre-tacked balls have been tested in Spring Training, the Arizona Fall League, and at different levels of the minors in recent years. Those experiments took on increased urgency during the 2021 campaign, when MLB enforced a midseason crackdown on the ban on grip-altering foreign substances.
The foreign substance ban came in response to increasing spin rates, as MLB determined too many pitchers were using grip enhancers to improve the raw quality of their stuff as opposed to “merely” aiding control. The crackdown wasn’t without criticism, however, with one prevalent concern being hitter safety if pitchers had less feel for the ball. In an effort to address those fears, MLB has sought prototypes that allow pitchers an improved grip without artificially creating dramatically more pitch movement.
Last June, Evan Drellich of the Athletic reported that MLB had kicked around a pair of pre-tracked prototypes in the Double-A Southern and Texas Leagues. However, Keyser writes those experiments were scrapped relatively early on after it became clear those solutions were unsatisfactory. MLB has made unspecified changes in response to player feedback to create a new iteration that’ll be tested this year. According to Keyser, the Southern League will use the pre-tacked ball for the first half of the season before going back to the standard ball — which is manually mudded prior to games — for the second half of the year. MLB will compare the two halves’ data and decide whether the prototype warrants further experimentation.
It’s unclear whether MLB will be able to create a pre-tacked ball it deems sufficient for major league use. For now, they’ll continue tinkering in the minors with an eye towards potential implementation at the highest level far down the line.
Egad!
Soon it wont be even baseball with all the rule changes
Calm down, grandpa. It’s just a pre-tacked ball.
People said the same thing when Jackie Robinson came into the league. They at least had racism as the crux to their bad opinions. Where are you coming from? Is this the straw the broke the camel’s back? Did a pre-tacked ball kill your family and you’re going death wish Charles Bronson on them?
Do you think older generations didn’t use grip enhancing products? They did, and with far less policing. Then they banned those products. No one complained about loogies being illegal and ruining baseball
You better be saying your comment sarcastically, thereby making me look stupid. I BETTER LOOK STUPID! Or else you are just a big idiot, and that is sad.
At least they were racists… that’s a new one.
Those of us upset with the rule changes are coming from a place of love for the game. Sorry that’s a totally foreign concept to you.
“We love the game and you obviously don’t…” That’s (unfortunately not) a new one.
dankyank, people who love the game can have different viewpoints on the best way to play it.
Yikes, at least they were…. racists.
Beans should put that on a shirt.
Your love of the game stems from watching relief pitchers do an interpretive dance number before each pitch? Allowing the batter to grab a new pair of batting gloves and replace them between every pitch? Not quite what I’d say I love about baseball, but sure.
Settle down, Francis.
You might be the one who needs to calm down.
b4j? So much drama. easy brah.
I’m a grandpa and I love the rule changes. It’s not an age thing.
A ball surface that doesn’t require rosin, pine tar, sticky tack, saliva or manually rubbed river mud is really going to ruin the game for you?
The problem with pre-tacked baseballs is that it’s just one more way to provide more offense. Manfred won’t be satisfied until teams score 100 runs a game since he’s trying to get the kiddos who have turned to basketball because of all of the ridiculous number of points scored to come back to baseball. 300+ points per game in the NBA? How hard can that be? At least in baseball, or how baseball used to be pre-2023, every run counts 90% of the time.
The opposite. Tacky baseballs benefit pitchers.
You’re absolutely right!! It’s a great disadvantage to hitters. Nobody wants to pay to come to a game and see a bunch of strikeouts. Then you’re only doing it in one league!! So all of these players whom are working to advance are watching their numbers drop. Why don’t we just move the mound back 2ft. and allow the players to spray their barrels with pine tar. It’s all ridiculous!! I’m a parent of a player in that league and my kid got hit in the head with 95mph fastball that the pitcher could not control because of these balls. We had 9 hit batters the first day of use. All of this new extra movement is ruining hitters approaches. They would never do this in the Big Leagues because attendance would drop and viewership would drop because patrons don’t want to see a bunch of strikeouts and hit batters. It’s absolutely absurd!! Stop tampering with the game and allow these young men whom worked so hard using regular balls and not magical extra grip balls that nobody has even had an opportunity to even see. Stop cheating these young men out of possible advances to other levels and cheating them out of money when they tell you, oh your numbers aren’t up to par so we can’t give you a new contract. Go back to the regular balls before someone gets seriously hurt and allow these men to play ball like all of the other leagues!!!!! It’s ludicrous
The league, in my and many others’ view, is unjustifiedly forcing offense back into the game instead of making hitter adapt. Teach players to hit for average and make line drive contact, then reevaluate the supposed offensive crisis.
We all get it; MLB feels HRs are owed a debt of gratitude for restoring the game after the 1994 strike. The problem is hitters are now one dimensional and Manfred is resorting to banning logical, strategic responses.
@dankyank. After 1968 baseball lowered the entire mound. Nothing has changed. Players now coming up will aim at this style of play. And it’s actually very appealing. We’re seeing stolen bases…they aren’t actually myth. It’s not just 3 true outcome ball. Yeah you’ll get 90 minute games when your offense can’t make contact. But they couldn’t make contact in 4 hours either
Yeah! Soon it will be ballbase, and the balls will be the bases and the bases will be the balls. Imagine such a world! One in which people won’t even get off my lawn!
Balls are clearly juiced this year. I hate how they can change the ball at their discretion. So much manipulation to get the desired result. Nothing natural about it anymore.
The ball does seem to be flying in the early going.
Or they are doing these same “tests” in Yankee games too.
They need to stop this, either test things in spring training, or do a baseline for all minor league. This dinking and dunking they do is hurting the integrity of the games. Use the same ball all year, don’t put finger on the scale.
Are baseballs natural? Is there a baseball tree? They haven’t been made the same way for 150+ years.
This may sound silly, but if a ball is pre-tacked, wouldn’t it be harder to detect extra tack? Does it even matter?
It doesn’t. The tack was never an issue. It was just an excuse to hide the league’s continued messing with the ball.
I gotta disagree with that a bit DarkSide. Before the crackdown Cole had set a major league record for most strikeouts without a walk (I think that was the record broken) and was the best pitcher in baseball (argument for deGrom noted). After the crackdown he became just a very good pitcher.
But he league continues to mix and mash in certain venues. They need to know the ball is having the desired effect. If pitchers are adding, the control gets mucked.
That’s what dark side is alluding to
This was my first thought. If the ball is pre-tacked, I believe it would almost be impossible to police if more “tack” was used unless the pitcher made it extremely obvious.
MLB should concentrate on quality assurance and quality control of the current baseballs. Agree to a standard and test to assure the suppliers are meeting it.
Baseballs are flying out all over parks already, and some are happening in cold weather areas where at this time of year those balls should be dying. As soon as the temperature and humidity goes up watching 450 foot HR’s will be normal, and some will be traveling 500 feet. This is nuts.
As a few years ago, the giveaway early in the season was that experienced OF’s would position themselves to wait for a fly ball to come down, then drift further and further back in spite of there being no noticeable wind. It’s happening again. Even a few game broadcasters have started talking about it.
Elon Musk companies hire the best engineers / scientists (studies show the best of the best in college want to work for one of his companies). Hire some of them to go to work on designing a fair baseball, and then develop a design process to produce them consistently. Anyone that quotes a players hitting or pitching statistics over a period of years has to make allowances for when the ball is juiced more than other years to give any semblance of accuracy. The game is named “Baseball”. Standardize the GD baseballs from year to year!
I thought we were done handling sticky balls.
If we’re going to be constantly manipulating the ball, at least return to the days where pitchers were make their own balls.
I don’t know how they think baseball never evolved until the recent changes. Yes, until recently the distance between bases and the mound didn’t change – but everything else did. Balls, gear, mound height, bats, balls, salaries, training, coaching – all of it.
Mud started to be rubbed into the balls in the 30s. Do purists want to go back before the mud? How about using the same ball throughout the game unless it was hit out of the park? It would be nice to have a consistently mudless ball that’s easy to grip and doesn’t need to be replaced everytime it is hit or hits the ground.
@jeffmaz
No, I just want the pitchers to be allowed to make their own balls and bring them to use instead of MLB manipulating the balls. This would make more sense as the pitcher is the one using the ball for the purpose of getting batters out not MLB management.
Just a distraction from MLB to cover up bringing back the juiced balls.
Kinda sucks to be a minor league pitcher, trying to work on your game and develop, and MLB just starts changing the ball all willy nilly on you
On the flip side, if players in the minor leagues are already familiar with something, they will have a leg up in the majors. Just like with the pitch clock.
This is what happens. You start tinkering and you can’t return to the original. Now every year they have to tinker with their balls a little more
Sounds kind of tacky.
The balls that I saw during spring training had very little mud. It was obvious once I saw more than a few foul balls. The surface of the balls was very shiny and white. I also saw more than one pitcher reject four or five balls in a row before finding one that was suitable.
The consistency of the spring training balls was a concern as well. I saw more than one with raised seams, including one that Bo Bichette used to hit a double against the Rays. The seam height difference is visually obvious and verified by feel.
Compared to balls from 2019 spring training, there are some differences. The 2023 balls feel slicker, and the older ball stitching is much more consistent.
I’d say factory defects still are a variable, I believe if we picked up footballs made at various intervals, in the same place made, but found in different venues, there would be a difference, but nobody outside of the mlb knows what that variable percentage boils down to. Even footballs were shown to have these variables.
At least in football they are only being thrown by 32-60 players (qbs). You may have that same number of pitchers on a given week in baseball. Whole year obviously exponentially greater.
Basically saying, it’s already incredibly difficult to get baseballs made to satisfaction between the league and the players. The issue is that there doesn’t seem to be a resolution or even progress being made. It’s going to be an issue for Long time, I guess.
I completely get the reactions about changes in the game. If people weren’t passionate they wouldn’t care. Baseball needs passionate fans. I’d say visiting a site like this at minimum pushes people beyond just being completely casual.
People love the game and have since childhood, often. For many that’s decades and decades ago. And I appreciate the defending of posterity. MLB has also given baseball fans too many reasons to be concerned..especially here in the last few decades.
But I always come back to Bill Veeck. He’s not with us now, of course. He’s of the vintage to make ANY of us seem like children here…even our oldest commenter.
He drew many issues, notorious issues, with the stodgy club of owners of his day. The day we all seem to look back on with nostalgia. But in fact, it was his rebel nature that helped to introduce new concepts in the game that all but the most diehard old time baseball person would consider “traditional” by now.
Perhaps, sometimes, we need to relax a little and realize all that baseball has been through, including major wars. It’s ebbed and flowed. For sure it’s been wrong. But then it would evolve. The game has ALWAYS evolved. Most rule changes from the very beginning were made because smart teams employed strategies, that while fully legal, led to imbalance. And baseball then moved to balance the game…until the NEXT time.
These rule changes are very new. They’re a wonderful concept. And I can guarantee they’ll need tweaked. But that is the entire history of the game. If you like tradition…there you are! Altering game play is absolutely traditional. We just make new traditions from this….as has always gone on.
This is why baseball is essentially a public trust. Not many care if WalMart changes design schemes. But if you feel ownership in something..you’ll care to the last detail.
Sometimes it’s good to realize atleast where people are coming from. If you’ve loved something forever..you want to pass it along. But please bare in mind…the game changed all along. And what might have made YOU first love it…might have come from a rule change meant to REACH you.
Patience. And just try to be open minded and kind to one another. That’s all. If baseball can survive World Wars it’ll survive this. And if the past is an indicator it’ll grow.
Shoo the chick’s off the play-by-play microphones is my only request.
Well, that’s not happening. Women have strived for greater involvement in the game. I was in Mariners camp with one of the female coaches. She busted her absolute tail. It would have been a crime to eliminate her over her gender. Same will go with broadcasting.
For me, it’s the voice. I could shoo away MOST broadcasters to be real honest. And that’s all personal to the listener. Not every female broadcaster will be stellar. Goes with broadcasting. But I don’t want to see good baseball people ever pushed away.
They are horrible on the mike. They try to make up for their lack of manly presentation by affecting an overly nasal Boo Boo Bear-like delivery or an insane and grating vocal fry. Yes, I suppose they are trying real hard but that very obvious over strain to be as good as the male broadcasters is off-putting to say the least. Mute buttons are very cool.
Exactly. We need more manly men holding phallic objects up to each others’ mouths while describing the athletic prowess of other manly men. There’s nothing more manly than that.
Heck! Even the commissioner’s name is super manly. “Man” – the definition of which is man – and “Fred” – which is another name for a man. So basically he’s the manliest.
Dock_Elvis;
Some of the male kids that have been hired to do Radio-TV baseball broadcasts giggle all the time and use “it’s like”, and “you know” so often I think I tuned into a 2nd grade class.
Suzyn Waldman has been working with John Sterling for 17 years doing Yankees radio, and I find her observations not just interesting, but almost always on point.
Unfortunately, we have a generation of kids that don’t understand the history or the techniques of whatever they do for a living. We have to live with that. Most people I know are like me – they check themselves out when shopping because asking a clerk for help is a waste of time; make purchases on the Internet after they do research; and do most work themselves because they can do it belter then the kids can.
Unfortunately, we have a generation of olds that don’t understand the difference between “then” and “than” but still have the nerve to criticize younger generations for how they speak. Like, you know? *giggles*
Well said, Metso!! Couldn’t agree more!!
Play-by-play broadcastingis strictly testosterone- based and we need no more estrogenic hysterics from the Jessica Mendozas of the world or even the spasticated, wrist- flopping, epicence episodes of Christopher Russo.
Yes! Finally, someone manly enough to say it! More men, please! Lots and lots of men. Just pump that testosterone hard into my face holes. You could even say I want it raining men, like that manly song from the era when men were men and women knew their place. I can tell you are a real man. We should get together (without the wives, of course – who needs that?).
@Samuel. I finally got to listen to Suzyn Waldman last season. I’d heard all kinds of bad things. I can’t recall them all, and perhaps some were true. But in the games I took in, she was very passionate and knowledgeable. She oddly reminded me of Harry Caray in that she would maybe express her feelings without a filter. She didn’t bother me one bit. No one needs my approval ya know…but that was my take. I honestly don’t give it much thought UNLESS a broadcaster piques me as off…or just plain boring. I could get scourged for it. But Tom Hamilton has never done for MD what he’s done for others. And perhaps it’s who you grow up hearing. I heard a lot of Denny Matthews. He was the radio voice of my childhood.
Wives are great!!
Just don’t want ’em yakin’ into a microphone trying to convince anyone with a proper sensibility that they can conduct a decent play-by-play. They are best on the phone with another distaffian talking at length about shoes and handbags. We need Mell Allen- not Gracie Allen.We need Red Barber….not Ava Barber. Milo Hamilton….not Ruth Hamilton. More macho not metso balls in the booth!
Woah! Woah! Woah!
Hold on a second.
You’re telling me you haven’t taught your wife not to yak on the phone? I’ve lost all respect for you. I thought you were a real man who knew how to teach his wife her proper place, but now I’m not so sure. Now I think you’re just overcompensating for some… shortcomings, if you take my meaning (a real man will understand).
And as if I needed more proof, the broadcaster voices you list weren’t exactly the most testosterone-filled specimens. Mel Allen? A bit too jolly – definitely not manly enough. Always asking, “how ’bout that?” like he had no clue. Real men don’t ask questions like that, and I bet he was asking a woman, too. Red Barber? Cutting hair is women’s work, and red is a very girly color – one step removed from pink, if you ask me (which you would know if you were a man). And finally Milo Hamilton. Well, what can I say besides his real name is Leland, and I think we can all agree that’s not very manly.
If you want macho (not Metso, though that is a pun, the manliest style of comedy), I submit Joe Buck – a very manly man who doesn’t even like baseball and wishes it were football, as any man bursting with testosterone should. Big burly men pounding into each other. Oh how my muscles flex just thinking about it.
So with that, I take my leave. I can’t in good conscience have a conversation with someone who has to take to the internet to lie about his manliness. You probably don’t even drive a hemi with truck nuts, but I bet you tell everyone you do. Are you even a man, bro?
Can’t say. I’m not a biologist.
The chick’s what? What possession of the chicks did you want off the play-by-play microphones?
Dock_Elvis;
Ah-HA, Bill Veeck – the racist that commissioned a cartoonist to draw Chief Wahoo…and brought the first 2 black players into the American League….Larry Doby and Satchel Paige (he tried to by the Pirates a few years earlier when they were for sale and said if he got the franchise he’d sign Buck O’Neill and Josh Gibson from the Negro League). Veeck publicly campaigned from the mid-50’s to the mid-60’s that MLB needed a pitch clock because the umpires were not enforcing the rules to deliver a pitch. And in that time most games lasted a little over 2 hours.
Yes, the owner/GM that never had an office door so any employee or player was free to walk in and speak with him about anything. Used to go drinking in Cleveland bars asking patrons what they thought of the Indians, and people were free to tell the owner what players should be sat down or traded. (Harry Carey shortly thereafter did the same thing in S.t Louis to get Cardinals fans involved in the team.)
That’s when baseball was a sport first, business second.
Postscript – In the late 90’s his son owned a minor league team. One promotion he had was “Lawyers Night’ – all lawyers attending were billed by the innings they watched.
@Samuel. Ha. Old Bill Veeck made a move to try to buy the Phillies during WWII and fully roster a black team. Oh yeah..full on racist. So much so he showed up to march one-legged in Martn Luther King Jr’s funeral procession. Then he was one of the few to show up and protest Curt Floods case in court.
Back when baseball was a business…without a lot of money lol.
Not ALL Veeck ideas were probably wonderful. Disco Demolition he just gave up on. Only did one. Another and the rest of Comiskey could have been destroyed too.
Im not sure of I’m ready for one hour games. I can’t get on my phone and watch that without missing it.
I’m enjoying it. The ball is flying. Grounders are getting through. Pitchers are under the pump. Fast men are stealing and flying around the bases. The cherry on top, there’s not nearly as much downtime between those things. Well done baseball. It’s looking good to me. I also feel that pitchers have had the better of the technological revolution, so putting them under a bit more time pressure might drag it back a bit.
More than happy to see a more technologically advanced gripping the ball mechanism. The mud might have seen its day.
foppert- I was taught to work fast on the hill, and I’ve coached that. It keeps the batters from digging in too much, and the defense engaged.. “on the balls of their feet” so to speak.
With pitchers they’re often setting hitters up for an entire at bat. So it’s not necessarily rushing at all.
Elvis. Yes. Kapler is always talking ab out working fast. More when things start to go south. They can’t stand there forever and collect themselves.
Foppert- I’ll called it “baseball on pace” rather than fast. A good pace brings out the best in players.
Manfred’s skull is pretacked permanently
Alternate headline: Manfred Sticks Sticky Balls Down South
Jeez, how long should it take? Seems like they could have figured this out in a few months at most.