NO idea where to put this, so it gets it own thread.  Read the story at the link.

 

I knew there was something odd with those special balls Judge got during his run for 62 homers. 

The commissioner is in the Yankees pocket??? Gasp! Shock! Awe!!! 

NEVER could have seen that one coming Batman!

Ohmygod. This is so stupid and I hate it. Why does MLB do such dumb things that they can (and should) get absolutely roasted for? They deserve everything coming to them.

Judge's season was an all-time great and an incredibly fun thing of fans of all teams to follow, and now we're going to have people throw "well actually" asterisks on it. Completely avoidable and unnecessary blunder.

 

Pretty sure I made a post here not long ago about Manfred ensuring juiced balls made their way into Yankees games for Judge HR chase ratings.

 

 

Edited December 7, 20223 yr by JoeCredeYes
added link

Lmao, Bonds should get in the hall just for this.

How many of the worst balls made it into White Sox games?  Possible factor for the power outage?

Brutal

How insane is it that a sport can have different balls for different teams… thus affecting player stats, awards, bonuses, etc… what a joke

The commissioner could stop this but he's an idiot so...

This should be a fairly large deal and some sort of deeper look needs to be had. I’m all for the game being entertaining but you can’t play with different baseballs for different teams because if “marquee” games. 

And yet baseball somehow continues to justify keeping out the steroid users, yet they continue to manipulate the game as they so choose 

I’ll throw a conspiracy theory out there just because nothing made sense in 2022.

The Sox dealt with a lot of injuries but even so, it was the first time since 1990 the Sox didn’t have a player hit 20 HR’s. We saw multiple stories throughout the year about how Menechino was really putting an emphasis on hitting to all fields, going up the middle more, etc. He had a track record of that in Miami as well, but there was a major power outage from the Sox in 2022 and there were was discussion after discussion here about how things literally just didn’t make sense, how can a team built basically around power all have a collective “outage” and veterans like Abreu, Grandal, and even guys like Eloy-Moncada-Robert-Anderson all change their approach so much? How did it all happen to everyone? 
 

Did the Sox get tipped off to something before the season? Did they know the balls might have the juice taken out of them and try and “be smarter” than everyone else and get ahead of it? Obviously it failed in spectacular fashion and I think this is a fairly wild take…but I bring it up because we still never really had an understanding of where the power went in 2022

8 hours ago, Tony said:

I’ll throw a conspiracy theory out there just because nothing made sense in 2022.

The Sox dealt with a lot of injuries but even so, it was the first time since 1990 the Sox didn’t have a player hit 20 HR’s. We saw multiple stories throughout the year about how Menechino was really putting an emphasis on hitting to all fields, going up the middle more, etc. He had a track record of that in Miami as well, but there was a major power outage from the Sox in 2022 and there were was discussion after discussion here about how things literally just didn’t make sense, how can a team built basically around power all have a collective “outage” and veterans like Abreu, Grandal, and even guys like Eloy-Moncada-Robert-Anderson all change their approach so much? How did it all happen to everyone? 
 

Did the Sox get tipped off to something before the season? Did they know the balls might have the juice taken out of them and try and “be smarter” than everyone else and get ahead of it? Obviously it failed in spectacular fashion and I think this is a fairly wild take…but I bring it up because we still never really had an understanding of where the power went in 2022

JR and Tony have been around long enough to have caught wind of this and the White Sox are dumb enough to try and modify how they are run.

The fact this isn't going to blow up tells you how media works now a days.

This is another black eye on manfred, but, I feel like people are acting like Judge got the juiced ball. If they really wanted him to win the HR record, why not just give the juiced ball? Doesn't take anything away from Judge imo, hitting 62 on this crop of pitchers with a slightly heavier ball than the notably dead ball is incredible.

Just wondering how far-fetched is a scenario, where the outcome of games, for gambling purposes, could be controlled by which balls are used where.

9 minutes ago, White Sox Park said:

Just wondering how far-fetched is a scenario, where the outcome of games, for gambling purposes, could be controlled by which balls are used where.

it would at least affect the over unders right?

34 minutes ago, bmags said:

it would at least affect the over unders right?

I believe we saw a quote from some professional gambler last offseason saying that they totally gave up betting on those because it was just plain impossible to guess. 

16 hours ago, PorkChopExpress said:

How many of the worst balls made it into White Sox games?  Possible factor for the power outage?

Well it certainly felt like way more balls than normal died on the warning track for the 2022 Chicago White Sox, maybe Jay Cuda can run some numbers on that. 

I mean if the Sox had the shitty baseballs it certainly didn’t seem like it affected the other teams

18 hours ago, MiddleCoastBias said:

Ohmygod. This is so stupid and I hate it. Why does MLB do such dumb things that they can (and should) get absolutely roasted for? They deserve everything coming to them.

Judge's season was an all-time great and an incredibly fun thing of fans of all teams to follow, and now we're going to have people throw "well actually" asterisks on it. Completely avoidable and unnecessary blunder.

Considering MLB’s involvement with sports betting, this seems beyond a blunder. This looks like criminal conspiracy to me. You can’t have a variable in the game that clearly effects game outcomes, particularly when you are pushing sports betting that involves over/under betting

13 minutes ago, FourEyesShottenhoffer said:

Considering MLB’s involvement with sports betting, this seems beyond a blunder. This looks like criminal conspiracy to me. You can’t have a variable in the game that clearly effects game outcomes, particularly when you are pushing sports betting that involves over/under betting

With evidence that MLB tried to prevent players from helping anyone gather baseball that could be analyzed, this definitely sounds intentional and nefarious.

https://twitter.com/NoahAFrank/status/1600329918935506944?t=80TdUs_Yw0-LVXvCms17IA&s=19

This stuff is all so annoying.  Don't want to speak for anybody else, but I feel like stats are part of what makes baseball great and interesting.  It just seems to be a perpetual cycle in the MLB that guys are not on even or fair playing fields, which makes the numbers a whole heck of a lot less useful or meaningful, frustrating at best. 

I hate the Yankees as much as any American lacking brain damage but I've got complete and total respect for Judge. He earned it and I won't take what I'm feeling out on him or Yankees fans. Sure they have everything a fanbase could ask for but I'd be having a bad day if someone told me Timmy's Field of Dreams home run was off a ball juiced just for him. The situation sucks for everyone.

I am tired of capitalists taking obscene amounts of money at the expense of our dignities. Sure we are White Sox fans and have no dignity to begin with but it feels especially pathetic to be a baseball romantic anymore. The sport has likely never been what I imagined it to be. I can accept that. Still I feel that we lose more of baseball's aesthetics every year. Seeing the strike zone sucks. Having gambling shoved in our faces sucks (RIP sports radio). If I have to watch the pitch clock tick down behind the batter that will suck more than anything.

To get to the point, Manfred juiced the Judge balls because he wanted the money. It is as simple as that. That's why they rolled the goldilocks balls out for the important games. Manfred wants to create the best product for advertisers. I can deal with change and would accept pitch clocks and robot strike zones. Those two things on their own would be manageable. Everyone's got their breaking point and to me its when the billionaires decide they want a specific player to break a record. This sucks. I'm too young to be acting this old.

 

 

Edited December 8, 20223 yr by MackowiakYakYak