Offense is up throughout Major League Baseball in 2017, and while lots of theories have been offered, one seems to come up more than others.
Detroit Tigers pitcher Justin Verlander wasn’t afraid to say it on Sunday, either. After ESPN’s Buster Olney shared a statistic about how baseball has more 20 home run hitters in 2017 than it did in all of 2014, Verlander shared his theory — the baseballs are juiced.
Just say it @Buster_ESPN https://t.co/8Kl3bqXGXM
— Justin Verlander (@JustinVerlander) August 20, 2017
Verlander is not the first to raise such concerns. Several pitchers have felt that blisters are more common, and FiveThirtyEight has deduced that the baseballs are the most likely cause for the offensive boom. MLB has floated changes to the baseballs, but announced nothing prior to the season, meaning that if this is indeed the case, they did it as quietly as possible.
