Effectively Wild: A FanGraphs Baseball Podcast - Effectively Wild Episode 2497: Follow the Bouncing Ball

Episode Date: June 27, 2026

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, please visit our Patreon. Ben Lindbergh and Ben Clemens banter about some suspicious variability in the ball’s behavior and whether the low-drag, high-home-run-rate times of the late 2010s have returned, Carlos Mendoza’s “departure” from the Mets, the Blue Jays’ dominance of “Phase 1” of All-Star voting, the hitters and pitchers who have most overperformed and underperformed their projections through the halfway point of the regular season, forsaking single-team fandom, platoon god Paul Goldschmidt, Dalton Rushing’s clash with Shohei Ohtani, the Pope’s audience with A.J. Pierzynski, MLB’s economic proposals, and more, plus Stat Blasts about an unusual homestand and the Nationals’ latest, not-so-greatest bullpen blowup(s). Audio intro: Kite Person, “Effectively Wild Theme” Audio outro: Ted O., “Effectively Wild Theme” Link to MLFAD scoreboard Link to bouncing ball wiki Link to Savant drag dashboard Link to ball carry analysis Link to Nathan post 1 Link to Nathan post 2 Link to Nathan post 3 Link to Nathan post 4 Link to March/April scoring Link to May scoring Link to story about May offense Link to June scoring Link to MLB/Rawlings story Link to scoring/attendance research 1 Link to scoring/attendance research 2 Link to scoring/attendance research 3 Link to scoring/attendance research 4 Link to Mets announcement tweet Link to Mets announcement post Link to MLBTR on Mendoza Link to MLBTR on Green Link to Rosenthal on Mendoza/Stearns Link to Ben L. on team turnover Link to FG playoff odds Link to Phase 1 ASG voting results Link to Sogard contest post Link to FG combined WAR leaderboard Link to 2025 trade value series Link to Dan S. on batter ZiPS movers Link to Dan S. on pitcher ZiPS movers Link to batter preseason projections Link to batter pace leaders Link to batter paces vs. projections Link to pitcher preseason projections Link to pitcher pace leaders Link to pitcher paces vs. projections Link to MLBTR on Ragans Link to Cashman on running back the roster Link to Goldschmidt tOPS+ query Link to Goldschmidt sOPS+ query Link to 1B JAWS leaders Link to Petriello on Goldschmidt Link to Other Ben’s VEB archive Link to Jensen HR off of Kimbrel Link to Rushing/Ohtani video Link to Rushing quotes Link to Rushing postgame video Link to Ohtani postgame video Link to Roberts postgame video Link to contested challenge clip Link to dugout conferences clip Link to mound conference clip Link to costly missed catch Link to Rushing bench reaction Link to Ohtani’s Smith/Rushing splits Link to Rosenthal on Pope/Pierzynski Link to Papal infallibility wiki Link to MLB proposals article Link to MLB proposals tweet Link to MLBPA response Link to article on player aging Link to aging curve research 1 Link to aging curve research 2 Link to late homestands spreadsheet Link to BP on the Phillies comebacks Link to Langs on the Phillies comebacks Link to 2026 team RP WAR Link to worst-ever team RP WAR Link to Phillies comeback gamer Link to last-strike-comebacks data Link to non-Einstein quote investigation Link to The Athletic on the Nats’ pen Link to The Athletic on the Nats’ pen again Link to Rockies comeback gamer Link to Other Ben on inherited runners Link to Stat Blast on inherited runners Link to listener emails database Link to SCG Con Link to MLBTR on Minasian/Mozeliak Link to Miz 105.5 mph story Link to fastest tracked pitches Link to Miz postgame comment Link to Miz postgame clip  Sponsor Us on Patreon  Give a Gift Subscription  Email Us: [e-mail]  Effectively Wild Subreddit  Effectively Wild Wiki  Apple Podcasts Feed   Spotify Feed  YouTube Playlist  Facebook Group  Bluesky Account  Twitter Account  Get Our Merch! var SERVER_DATA = Object.assign(SERVER_DATA || {}); Source

Take me to the diamond, lead me through the turnstile. Shower me with data that I never thought to compile. Now we're freely not a scorecard with a cracker jack with a smile. Hello and welcome to episode 2497 of Effectively Wild, the Baseball podcast from fan graphs presented by our Patreon supporters. I am Ben Lindbergh of the ringer, not joined today by Meg Rally of Fangraphs who had something come up last minute. And so pinch potting today on short notice in his first podcast appearance since our preseason predictions game, it's Ben Clemens. Other Ben, we're doubling up on Ben's. Welcome back. Hey, how's it going? It is going okay. And I don't know if

you're aware of this, but we are locked in a duel to the death in the minor league for agent draft. And you may or may not have checked the updated real time. I locked in a duel for death. Yeah. You can check this, of course, at eWStats.com, where the leaders are updated daily. And you and I right now, I will not mention how Meg is doing out of respect to her and she's not here to defend herself. So I will just say that you and I are one, plate appearance plus or slash batter faced apart. That is how close this is. Yeah.

Yeah. That's crazy. Yep. And we've got a lot of season left to go. And you have yesterday's guest, John Brebia, bolstering your stats now. Oh, yesterday's guest, John Brevia, amazing. Yep. A member of your minor league pre-agent draft team.

And I just drafted him for the vibes. I know. And to spite me to vulture him because you know he's my favorite. it. But anyway, it's neck and neck right now. It's 272 to 271. Nobody's doing well, by the way. We're all having an off year. But it's a little, it's like MLB, right? It's like most- It's going to pick up in September. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, most of the teams are kind of crappy, but it's a close race. So it's very much like, I don't know, the American League. Anyway, may the better drafter win, I suppose. I don't know about that, because I feel like that would not favor me. But, well, we'll see. May the person who gets luckier win. So we have a lot of banter to get to today on the agenda, as best as I can tell, because you never know.

Podcasts are unpredictable. But we're going to talk about the variability in the baseball's behavior of late. We will talk about the Mets finally firing Carlos Mendoza. We will talk about all-star voting updates. We will talk about the clash of Dalton rushing and Shohei Otani. We'll talk about platoon god Paul Goldschmidt, the Pope meeting A.J. Persinski, some players at the halfway point of the season who have over or underperformed their projections. And who knows what else. Maybe I'll sneak in a stat blast or two. So we've got a full itinerary today. And I will just wish you a happy end of the first half because we are right at that milestone right now. This is it.

We're, as we speak on Friday afternoon, 49.7% of the regular season schedule is complete. And when... Tomorrow. Yeah, Friday's games are played. This is the day that we're going to blow by the halfway point. And, of course, this is what we recognize as the end of the first half here at Effectively Wild. All-Star game and splits on various websites be damned. I agree.

I send out my list of, like, early trade value checks to Dan Zimborski. right after the end of the first half of the season. And I was just slacking with him this morning. Like, hey, let's get ready. Season's halfway over. We talked last time about one kind of balls. We talked about testicles. We talked about jazz chisholm and his refusal to wear a cuff even after a recent painful impact.

But I want to talk about another type of balls here to begin this episode. And that's the official Major League Baseball, which has been behaving a bit oddly. of late. And I don't know whether you have taken a gander at the baseball savant drag leaderboard lately. I have. Yeah. Yeah. It's telling a quite curious story. And there's been a bunch of discussion about this and some research online. But the upshot is that it sure looks like the ball has changed lately, that the drag has been reduced pretty precipitously that we started the season. It was looking more or less normal or the new normal as it has been for the last season or two. No homers. Yeah. And then lately, just over the past month or so, really, the drag has plummeted. And it has plummeted to the

point where it's basically 2019 level drag. Which is not the like the peak of peak of peaks, I don't think. 2016 was pretty crazy. But 2019, I think that was the peak. But either way, very high. Yeah. And so the ball had changed, and MLB acknowledged that it had changed or at least kind of did that thing where it sent a memo around and then the memo was reported on, even though

MLB never really officially announced it. I always think it's weird when there's like an MLB.com story about a memo that MLB sent to teams, but it's like, report. MLB evidently sent a memo around to teams, but we won't just publish that memo on our website. Anyway, oh, and by the way, we might also touch on some of the specifics of MLB's economic proposals during CBA bargaining this week. But this is weird.

Basically, there's always some variability because on this savant dashboard, which was implemented in response to all the scrutiny surrounding the drag. Yeah, they're like, look, it's okay. Yeah, this was kind of, okay, sunlight is the best disinfectant, and here you can kind of tell that everything's on the level, and we can all track this together. And it has varied from year to year, and there's always some variability within each year, just because these are still handmade balls and different batches are slightly different within the legal specifications and everything. But we've never seen anything like this, where we have within the same season, pretty much the highest drag on record going back a decade, and now back to basically the lowest drag in the span of a few months

or even a month or two here. So this seems suspicious. I've kind of lost track of the exact mechanics of how they deal with, like, the overall baseballs they delivered everybody. But I remember they used to do it in batches, right? Like there were those Meredith Will's articles about how, oh, this is the 2019 ball, but there's some left over in this batch. Yeah.

So maybe that's what's going on in the, They were just burning through all the 2025 balls still until June. But it's really weird. I mean, I never got the sense that they had perfect control over this. I think everyone kind of got that sense from how just like, like not buffoonish. That's not the right word. But it might do. But like buffoon is adjacent, let's say.

Kind of feeling like that's happening again. I think it's welcome. I wouldn't mind a little more scoring in baseball and figuring it out. But sunlight is the best disinfectant except when something like this happens. And then it's like, well, what are you guys up to? It's very hard to argue. I've noticed that tango has been posting some things about how like, oh, well, actually, this is only one of the largest month-over-month changes in Wobah on record.

Yeah. It's like, well, but. Yeah, it does put the league in kind of an awkward position when it is publishing these numbers on its site, which I'm glad, and I assume that these numbers are above board and everything. and other people have done analysis independently. And Alan Nathan is one of the acknowledged experts here. He helped come up with the method of determining the drag on the ball by looking at, well, pitch characteristics in the past, but also batted ball characteristics. And he was on the panel that participated in the study years ago that determined that, oh, yeah, actually something did change about the ball.

and this is part of why we have so many homers is the seam height and the reduced drag. And so he has been doing some independent analysis of his own, which he's been publishing on Blue Sky. He's a multi-time effectively wildguessed, physics of baseball expert, professor emeritus, et cetera. And so he has run the numbers here, and I corresponded with him just to make sure

that I was understanding his findings accurately, and he said that I was. And his research suggests that the drag this year has been more variable than in any past season on record. So there's always, as we said, it bounces around, some mean, but this is out of whack with every other season that we have this data for. And the reduced drag, as one would expect, is leading to longer fly ball distances with the same quality of contact.

And that's after accounting for temperature. So it's not just, hey, it's the summer, it's warmer, the ball is carrying. That is true, but that is not nearly sufficient to it. explain this. So it's even apparent if you look at domed ballparks, say the chop, where the atmospheric conditions are consistent. There's still this difference in Kerry. He confirmed that that is his conclusion. I asked him if he had any hypothesis about why this might be happening. And he said, at the present time, I will stick with analysis and not speculate about the underlying cause. So he's being a responsible scientist, I suppose. But he said that I have accurately summarized his findings.

So there's been a lot of interest in this and reluctant to link to betting site stuff, but obviously the sports betters are pretty interested in this because it's going to have a big impact on overunders and such. And so there's been a lot of analysis that has been done by the sports bettors and the sharps. And I don't know if the public people are the sharps. Maybe they're not. But they have published a lot of analysis suggesting that, yeah, this is weird. There are some sharps in the public, not everyone. Yeah.

I mean, this is, it's not like it can be hand-waved away. Yeah. It's too large a move. It clearly happened. It's big enough move that if you watch a game, it feels like it's happening. Like, they're just more home runs. Yeah. It's kind of bizarre.

I don't hate where it's, where it is now. Yeah. But, like, having a little more control over it would seem good. Yeah. And maybe they have had control over it, but if so, they've neglected to tell us what they were doing. So if this was on purpose, and they said they were going to, to be doing it, that would be one thing. If it's not on purpose, that's not a great reflection on the quality control because MLB bought a stake-in, became a co-owner of Rawlings in 2018,

ostensibly to get better control over the manufacturing process. So the league doesn't have much of an excuse when the league co-owns the company that makes the balls. But it has seemingly produced or at least coincided with a big increase in scoring. So I like to look at just to get some gauge of how well the ball is carrying. It's not a perfect measure of that. But just home runs on contact, which is just that's minus strikeouts and then home runs over that, basically. And, you know, there's some confounding factors there about how hard people are hitting the ball and are they hitting it in the air or not. But there isn't actually any difference in contact quality seemingly.

It's not as if exit speed has ticked up or anything. And this month, June, the home run per contact, it's 5.2%. So 5.2% of balls in play have been homers. And in 2019, which was peak wacky home run year, it was 5.4 or 5.5. So it's very close to what it was in that full season. And we still have a couple even warmer months coming up. And the scoring has increased significantly. So in May, there were 8.61 runs per game scored.

That's both teams combined on average. And in June so far, it's 9.4. So it's a lot more. Yeah, about 8 tenths of a run per game. That's a lot. And May was low. And people were sort of sounding the alarm about, wait, why is scoring so low in May? And it was actually, scoring was lower in May than it had been in March slash April,

which is not what you would expect. And now it has just reversed and has suddenly spiked, which I guess almost seems more suspicious. It's almost as if MLB freaked out about how low scoring was in May. And then they're like, oh. For the juice one's in. Yeah. No, I don't know if that's the case because, I mean,

it's not like, you know, they could suddenly order a run of balls that had low seams or something based on scoring being low in May. They would have had to had a stockpile of, of juicier balls just lying around waiting to be introduced or something. But the timing there going from, oh, boy, scoring sure is low. And not just the fact that on base percentage is low and batting averages are low and strikeouts are high. And that stuff is still generally true. But also, we're not getting as many home runs, which have been propping up the scoring.

And so, you know, it's a little suggestive. I mean, it's kind of like with the previous ball change in late 2015 or whenever it was that there had been. in a period of low scoring and everyone was worried about the scoring and then suddenly the ball changed. And as far as we know, that was not on purpose, but whenever it fluctuates in that direction where everyone's kind of worried about low scoring and then suddenly, ooh, the ball changed and now runs are back, then that makes it seem even more suspicious if you are conspiracy-minded. So I'm just like perusing home runs for fly ball, which I think is a similar proxy. And it was like 11% the first two months, kind of unchanged. And last year was 11% of the

first few months. Then it went up like half a percent, half percent of the next month. Now it's gone up two and a half. It's just a different. We're back in the like, yeah, the juiced ball era all of a sudden. That's just, I don't know. If this is inadvertent, they should do a better job. I don't, I don't hate, but like, hopefully the earlier season ball was inadvertent. is my hope. And this one is the new normal because I would like some offense. And I understand that too many home runs is not that fun.

But we're not at that point where there's not enough offense. So I think that one thing you might say that's unrelated to drag that is making home run for fly ball rate go up a little bit is walk rates back down. And zone rates back up. And since the zone is smaller and zone rates up, that means that more balls are right in the part where you can hit it. Yeah. So maybe that's doing some of it.

But also the ball is dragging a lot less. Yeah, it's seemingly like double what you would expect just based on batted ball characteristics and temperature and everything. It's just way more than that. And according to at least some of the analysis, I saw, we've never seen a leap like this going from April to June of any of these other seasons on record. Yeah, and run per centauri, we haven't. I was just poring through that. Like, perusing through that when we were talking. Yeah.

So it's pretty surprising. But I guess if you don't like the level of offense and baseball, just wait a month. Yeah, and I think that we've all become kind of hyper-conscious of the behavior of the ball and scoring fluctuations because there really is a lot of randomness. And even though there are a lot of games and a lot of balls in play and everything, it does just fluctuate a lot. And so I think because we all just got kind of conditioned to think, oh, what's going on with the ball because of that period where something was going on with the ball.

And it didn't help that Rob Manfred at the time was downplaying it and denying that anything had changed when the data pretty clearly suggested that something was different about the ball. And so that kind of spoiled any credibility MLB might have had on this because they did deny it. And maybe they legitimately believed that that was the case and they hadn't consciously changed anything.

But even based on the public data, it was just pretty apparent to me, to many others, I think, that something was going on here, even as they were poo-pooing that explanation. So they have kind of killed their credibility when it comes to denying that something is happening now. Not that they have commented on this, to my knowledge. And I haven't asked them about it yet, and maybe I will, because the fact that it's on their website now makes it hard to deny that something unusual is happening here. Yeah.

I mean, you can downplay it, but the line is just made. moving. Like, what are you going to say? Right. I made this graph here to show you that the line's not moving. Well, the line's moving. Yeah. So I think there have been times when we have made too much of this and we've sort of, you know, it's just like lurking in every corner, there's a new ball and, oh, there's a week or a month of low offense or high offense. Oh, they change the ball. And sometimes that's a bit of an overreaction. But in this case, I don't really think it is. This seems to be anomalous enough that something's going on. So I, I can't predict whether it will continue because you couldn't have predicted that it would happen at all.

So, and that's the downside, I guess, of this is that you just don't really know from season to season or month to month how it's going to behave. And it had seemed like they had gotten it somewhat under control. Like, you know, in the 2021 to 2024 period, it was fairly stable. Yeah, you could argue with the level, but they're very consistent. I agree. Yeah, yeah. And even last year, there was a bit more drag and then the beginning of this year, too. But it wasn't wildly out of whack.

And historically speaking, even though some people have kind of called this like the dead ball or whatever, I think historically speaking, this is still quite a lively ball in the grand scheme of things. Just it's hard to account for all the factors that influence home run rate, obviously, just, you know, the whole style of hitting and what teams emphasize has changed over time. But when you look at just home runs on contact, we're still close to the top of the scale. Historically speaking, if you take the long view, and it's just if you think of 2019 or 2017 as the baseline, then it seems like, oh, the ball is dead. But really relative to pretty much any prior era. It's a little tricky because of the whole overlapping effects.

Yeah. Like the players from 1950 wouldn't hit this ball out at this rate. They weren't big enough, you know? But yeah, yeah, yeah. Like, I know what you're saying. Like, in terms of a power rate, it's pretty high. It's a little confounding because it turns out that power is a dominant strategy. But yeah, like, if you wanted to have a conspiracy theory about this,

it would be like the league noticed that drag was a little high. And they were like, let's make balls with a little less drag. Yeah. And then, yeah, oops. They overcompensate. But they, like, we know that they don't actually have that much control over this. Yeah. They've made that very clear over the years that, like, little changes in manufacturing things

that they don't actually have control over, can produce large effects. I have no idea if they're actually able to direct the way that the ball is made. They've certainly never said they can. But it is at least a little bit suggestive that drag started going up and then got some new balls and it went back down, but too much. I don't know. Like, we'll see. Like you said, we're all very hypervigilant to this and it makes me worried that I'm overreacting. But this is a big change.

It is. Yeah. And as you said, it's not bad. This might be better. or at least unless you fix the other things that are depressing offense. Yeah. Yeah, like I have fixes I prefer, but they're all impossible. Yeah, evidently.

You know, I'd rather make changes to roster rules around pitchers or move the mound back or whatever, things that you could do to increase contact and bolster batting averages. Right. And, you know, ban the positioning card, see if that lowers the babb at all because the fielders have gotten too good. the defense as a whole has gotten too good. But if you're not going to do that and you're just kind of going to go with the easy fix, which is, well, we could make the ball a little bit juicier than maybe this is better. Because in May, the league-wide OPS was 703, I think.

It was very low offense. And this month so far it's 745. And so going from 239 batting average, 314 on base, 390 slugging last month to 250, 321, 423 this month. On base is up a lot too. Yeah, even though the walk rate is down. That looks a little healthier. That's a bit more robust and maybe that's better because on the whole fans seem to like scoring. I do think the new zone is good for offense.

Yes. I think MLB would continue to tell you it's not a new zone. That's, you know, I say what you will. But the fact that the strike zone is measurably much smaller and seems to be good for offense, which I appreciate. And I do think that, you know, we talked about this. I mean, the last time we talked about the strike zone, that maybe pitchers would just change their strategy.

And hey, they have. Like, zone rates going up, walk rates going down. I like it. Yeah. But also, yeah, let's have the ball leave the park more often. Yeah. I'm pretty happy with this. Yeah.

And historically speaking, all else being accounted for, attendance seems to go up when scoring goes up. Fans like action, fans like dingers within reason, I guess. Yeah, yeah. Like, I think basketball shows you that you can go too far. Like, they're having a problem with too much offense and too many threes. But, like, more offense is fun. You don't go to the baseball game hoping that teams won't score.

Yeah. And even 2019 was maybe a too much where it just cheapened the home run. There is a too much, like, but we're not there right now. Okay. So it's something to monitor. But yeah, something certainly seems to be up for whatever reason. And if there was a change on purpose, you'd like that to have been publicized or for people to have been notified. And maybe for it not to happen midseason, which is kind of jarring also.

And you can't plan for it or anything. And you also got to think, because MLB is in bed with all these betting partners, you'd think that they probably would appreciate some consistency in the most important piece of equipment, too. just, I mean, I don't care about that. You know, if people are losing money, well, you know, shouldn't have been betting in the first place. Maybe you'll learn something. But you'd think that it would be in the interest of the betting partners or MLB. Or then again, I don't know, if people are losing more money because of this,

maybe the betting partners like that. I guess it depends on whether the house is winning more or less often than usual. I am fairly sure that they aren't doing it in any way where anyone would not have plausible deniability. Like, you can't have someone from the league talking to someone from the betting partners about the drag on the baseball. That would not be okay. I'm certain they're not doing that because they're not dummies. Yeah.

Like, that would be not good since they're facing the public. But yeah, I'm sure we won't hear anything from them about it. Well, I have reached out to the league just for the fun of it to see if I got a no comment or a wait and see or whatever. I'm sure I won't get an answer until next week, but I will update everyone. if and when I do. In a less surprising development, perhaps, or maybe it is surprising that it happened, given that it happened this late,

the Mets have dismissed Carlos Mendoza, or, as they put it in their announcement, Carlos Mendoza has departed as the Mets manager. She makes it sound so, so voluntary. What a euphemism. That'll do it for the free preview of today's Effectively Wild. Thank you for listening. If you'd like to listen on and hear

whatever wisdom and wit await, we would love to have you. You can visit patreon.com slash Effectively Wild to access the rest of this episode and plenty of other exclusive content, weekly subscriber-only episodes, monthly bonus shows, our Discord group, our live streams. Either way, we will be back with another episode soon, which will appear in full on this feed. Until then, we wish you well and thank you for your support of Effectively Wild, whatever form it takes.