Atlanta Braves Getting New Baseballs for Spring…Which Might Not Help

New Baseballs for Spring Might Make Hitter Evals Much More Difficult

Joe Frisaro is a reporter working for MLB.com who covers the Miami Marlins.  This week he, as well as most of the beat reporters around the league, was tweeting various photos of his team’s progress in getting ready for “truck day” – the process of getting all of their gear loaded onto a long-haul trailer for the trek to their Spring facilities.

Of course, in the case of the Marlins, that’s merely a hop/skip/jump up Interstate 95 to nearby Jupiter.  But one of Frisaro’s photos caught my eye this week.

New Gear, New Motifs

You may recall that MLB is continuing to do its occasional tweak of apparel this year

… with a new set of hats and jerseys for all 30 clubs.  The reason for this is fairly obvious:  they’d like you to buy more stuff.  Some of the hats range in aesthetic quality from “

very nice

” (White Sox) to “

hideous

” (Detroit – the undersized logo on a day-glow orange hat is just awful).

What I’d like to bring to your attention, though, is the “Interstate-like” logo on the sides of these hats.  This is actually pretty cool – just a little thing to note where each club heads for Spring workouts – whether AZ or FL.  In my view, that’s a nice little feature.

Except that the league went just a bit too far with this new branding thing.

Seems that they also decided to install this not-so-little logo onto the baseballs as well.  And that brings me to Frisaro’s tweet:

Yes.  The baseballs also have this logo… but it’s not in the muted colors used on the hats – it’s in the same dark blue ink used to imprint the ‘Official’ markings… in this case “* Official * 2016 Spring Training” with Rob Manfred’s signature.

So here’s a new large-ish (roughly 3/4″ wide on a 2-15/16″ diameter baseball) black logo on the side of the baseball.

If you check the close-up photo of “normal” baseballs above, you’ll see that this FL/AZ logo will be replacing the standard MLB logo.  No big deal?  Well maybe… that older logo seems to be a bit narrower with more of the white part of the ball showing through.  This new logo is essentially a large dark circle.

Maybe I’m overselling this, but I do think there’s a fairly noticeable difference here.  One that hitters may be able to exploit by being better able to pick up the spin on the baseball.

It truly doesn’t take a lot.  There are a whole lot of players that turn their careers around by getting just 1% or 2% better than before. The difference between hitting poorly and hitting well can be mere millimeters when it comes to putting a round bat against a round ball.

Not a Real Good Idea

It remains to be seen just what kind of impact this is going to have, but I’m thinking there could be a couple of issues:

• A few hitters that normally have some trouble picking up the ball early will suddenly have no problem doing so… and could be mashing baseballs all over the yard.
• Pitchers may wonder why nobody is offering at their breaking pitches… which will cause problems unless they’re in the strike zone.

We normally say that if you’re hitting well in Spring, those stats don’t mean a lot (though if you can’t hit in Spring, it’s more telling).  I expect that adage is going to be magnified a little more this year.  Moreover, coach evaluations of their hitters and pitchers may likewise be more difficult.

Likewise, once the regular season begins and suddenly this logo is removed, hitters will have to re-adjust.  That could lead to a bit less hitting for a week or so once the balls return to their traditional look.

Next: Braves Not Getting a Lot of Love This Year

You kinda figure that uniform tweaks are part of the landscape.  It gets silly that they are done so often these days, but it is what it is – merchandising.  In this case, though, messing with the baseballs has the potential to actually change the game.  Marginally, perhaps, but when it comes to that, no change is good.

You youngsters may not have any idea about using typewriters back in the old days, but everybody kept a bottle of Wite-Out with them to paint over errors.  Maybe baseball teams should see if they can find a couple gallons of the stuff for this Spring?