Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Andrew McCutchen said via his X account that an MLB representative told him the baseballs being used this season are different due to higher seams, which are leading to more drag on the baseball (and less travel).
Scoring is down a bit this year. Teams are averaging 4.32 runs in 2025, compared to 4.39 in 2024, per Baseball-Reference. Home runs per game are also down a touch, with teams averaging 1.09 in 2025 compared to 1.12 in 2024.
Commentary on the baseballs as years go by isn’t anything new. In recent memory, the talk on baseballs was perhaps loudest in 2019. Craig Calcaterra of NBC Sports cited a report from a “committee of scientists” asked to look at why baseballs were flying that season.
“There were 6,776 home runs hit during the regular season, which shattered the previous record, set in 2017, by nearly 11 percent. Numerous players around the league suspected or assumed that the league, which owns the ball manufacturer, Rawlings, had intentionally juiced the baseball to promote offense. The committee concluded in the report that ‘no evidence was found that changes in baseball performance were due to anything intentional on the part of Rawlings or MLB and were likely due to manufacturing variability.'”
In 2019, teams were hitting 1.39 home runs per game, the most all time. Three years later, that number dropped down to 1.07 per game. The difference was notable early in the 2022 season, so much so that Eno Sarris and Ken Rosenthal of The Athletic wrote and investigated in-depth on the matter.
Now there’s talk again about the baseballs. Of course, it doesn’t seem to affect some players, like New York Yankees superstar Aaron Judge, whose 26th homer on Friday against the Boston Red Sox flew 442 feet into the night sky.
But it’s certainly noticeable other times, when Mets right fielder Juan Soto hit a ball 110.8 mph that somehow deadened before going out of the park on Friday against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Ultimately, it’s certainly worth monitoring as the season continues. At the current rate, though, the 1.09 homers per game would be the second-lowest mark over the past 10 seasons.
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