One of the fun things about the 2017 season was the fact that we got to see a lot of dingers hit across all of baseball. Seriously, the players were absolutely crushing the ball all over the place last season and it got to the point where there were questions about whether or not the ball was juiced. MLB didn’t do the best job of presenting enough evidence to confirm that the ball wasn’t juiced and it also didn’t help matters when pitchers complained about the balls being too slick during the World Series, of all times.
Could MLB’s standardization of baseball storage lead to league-wide Humidor use?
Saturday’s Say Hey, Baseball discusses the ramifications that a baseball storage experiment in 2018 could have on the sport for 2019 and beyond.
Bill Streicher-USA TODAY Sports
Listen, we know it’s tough to catch up on everything happening in the baseball world each morning. Trying to find all of it while on your way to work or sitting at your desk just isn’t easy. It’s OK, though. Subscribe to our daily MLB newsletter and let us do the heavy lifting for you each morning to find the things you need to see.
While we may not see major changes coming in 2018, we might see MLB planting the seeds for a big change in 2019. According to Tom Verducci of Sports Illustrated, MLB is planning on making sure that all 30 teams store their baseballs in a standardized manner. That means that every team will store their balls in what was described to Verducci as “an air-conditioned and enclosed room.” This news comes on the heels of the news that the Diamondbacks were going to install a humidor at the extremely hitter-friendly Chase Field. Plus, we all know about how the Rockies have been using a humidor for years.
Depending on what happens this season, we could end up seeing the humidor coming to a baseball stadium near you. Verducci also reported that MLB was going to study the data from 2018 and use it to determine whether or not they’d have to install a humidor at every major league ballpark for the 2019 season. I’d imagine that if baseball has another season where the baseball flies out of the ballpark at a historic rate, then we’ll probably end up seeing MLB enter into the Humidor Era for 2019.
This won’t mean that the balls will carry the same way in every ballpark — not in 2018 with their current experiment with the rooms and not in 2019 should a humidor be installed in every ballpark. However, it could go a long way towards addressing the issues with the ball itself and it has to be seen as a positive that baseball is at least trying to solve the issue instead of acting like there isn’t an issue.
- The Grapefruit League and Cactus League rung in the first day of spring training games by wearing caps displaying the colors of Stoneman Douglas High School, with the Marlins welcoming the baseball and softball teams as their guests of honor.
- Defense may not be Avisail Garcia’s calling card, but he could have fooled any newcomers to the sport with the highway robbery that he committed on Friday at the expense of Corey Seager.
- Avisail Garcia couldn’t rob all of those dingers, though, as the Dodgers hit four home runs off of the White Sox. This included one dinger from the currently-svelte Matt Kemp.
- The Astros appear to be well-suited to defend their 2017 World Series title and Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs believes that they could be even better this season.
- One player from that 2017 Astros team has found a new home for 2018, as the Tigers have signed Francisco Liriano to a one-year deal.
- It’s hard to call a minor-league deal a “head-scratcher,” but the Twins may have accomplished that feat by bringing in Erick Aybar.
- Just a couple of days after the Pirates signed Michael Saunders, they released him so that he could sign with the Royals. The Corey Dickerson trade obviously changed things here.
- College baseball’s regular season is underway and New Mexico State appears to be in decent shape after they just barely edged by Mississippi Valley State by a measly 39 runs.
See More:
