Atlanta Braves and Other Teams Ordering Up for Spring

The equipment required for playing the game of baseball at the professional level is staggering. I will expect that many of you figured teams go through a lot of baseballs in a year. I’ll also bet that you’d be light on guessing just how many.

This is the time of year that the Atlanta Braves and other clubs are ordering and receiving the equipment that they will eventually load onto their full-size haulers for the trek to Florida and Arizona.

But just considering baseballs alone, you might be blown away at the volume of equipment we’re looking at here.

A tweet this morning from the Boston Red Sox put this into focus… and I started digging a little further.

Most of us don’t even think about the fact that baseballs are handed out to fans on almost a routine basis now-a-days. Foul balls… final outs of innings… an occasional extra souvenir handed out by a player.

That’s not even counting game situations in which virtually any mark gets a ball thrown out of play. All of these add up. A lot. And of course these Rawlings products aren’t free, either.

The Costs

If you wander down to your favorite Dick’s Sporting Goods or Academy Sports & Outdoors location, then you’ll find baseballs sold individually, which of course is the most expensive way to obtain them.

An official MLB ball, in case suitable for display is $24.99 at both retailers
A 2016 World Series ball is $34.99 at Dick’s
A dozen MLB balls can be had via Amazon.com for $219.99. That’s still over $18 apiece.

Teams, of course, get the best pricing possible. I found a 2011 article suggesting that MLB teams were getting their baseballs for around $72 per dozen… or $6 each.

That price is likely obsolete, but even if it is now $80 (which I’ll use for the rest of this), that’s a huge difference between the professionals’ prices and ours at retail.

But heck, at those rates, if I were a running a team’s merchandise store, I might be tempted to order a few thousand extras and hock them for $12-15 each… and make some extra cash for the club.

The Volume

But this is what blew me away. The sheer number of baseballs used. Here’s two data points… first, Spring Training and that aforementioned Red Sox tweet:

That’s 29,784 baseballs…. just for Spring Training. Wow!

Even at roughly $6.50 each now, that’s a total cost of $193,596 for baseballs that are largely going to be used for maybe a session of catch, perhaps 10 pitches in a game, a few swats in batting practice, and many given away to fans by one means or another (which includes dozens that are simply autographed to sell or give away by the teams as promotional items).

29,784 for roughly 45 days. 662 per day… roughly 3½ per player per day!

But there’s more: that 2011 piece also found that the all Major League teams – together – go through 900,000 baseballs annually.

Admittedly, I’m not certain how this breaks down:

Regular season alone? That would mean 370 balls per game. That’s… a lot.
Regular season and Spring? Even considering 2 games per day, that’s still around 277 per game. Still too many.
It’s also just 30,000 per team… yet the Red Sox are using that many just for Spring… and thus all of MLB is probably going through 900,000 baseballs before April!
Or does that figure mean something else?

Our Fred Owens took on this question for an inquirer last year. Here’s his answer on baseballs per game:

"Umpires – and home team clubhouse men – rub up 8 dozen balls before each game. The home team is responsible for storage of baseballs; the guidelines say at around 70 degrees and 50 percent humidity and the Rockies have to use a humidifier to keep the balls from drying out at altitude."

Okay, that’s just under 100 per game for each of the major league games in the regular season. 2,430 games… 243,000 baseballs.

Ah, but there’s also minor league baseball to consider! The lower you get in those leagues, the more that baseballs are re-used, so it’s at least plausible to think that 270 baseballs per day could take care of needs in the minors… also considering that their seasons are shorter.

New Gear is Wonderful

"Crash: Yeah, I’ve been in the majors. Yeah, I was in the Show. I was in the Show for 21 days once. Twenty-one greatest days of my life. You know, you never handle your luggage in the Show. Somebody else carries your bags. It’s great. You hit white balls for batting practice. Ballparks are like cathedrals. The hotels all have room service. The women all have long legs and brains."

More from Tomahawk Take

So let’s go with that: roughly 900,000 baseballs for the regular season and another 900,000 just for Spring. 1.8 million baseballs per year… 60,000 per team per year.

I have reached out to the Red Sox equipment manager to try and confirm these numbers. Will update here if we get additional information.

So that multiplies out to $11.7 million across the professional ranks… just for those red-stitched spherical horsehide-covered orbs at that $6.50 estimated price per ball.

It’s also close to $400,000 per team. Wow.

Next: 2016-17's Human Signing Rumor

Want to run your own major league club? You can’t forget the day-to-day costs of running an organization, and this is one of those recurring costs that adds up to a big number!

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