Fore! MLB’s issue with its ‘Titleist’-like baseballs is flying into foul territory

CLEVELAND — Launch angles. Exit velocities. Distance calculators.

Break out the tape measures, folks. Major League Baseball’s credibility is flying far, far away.

As the second half of the season gets underway, division races will begin to heat up, award contenders will continue to separate themselves and talk around the league of manipulated baseballs — well, it just won’t quit.

“It’s a [expletive] joke,” Astros pitcher Justin Verlander, the American League starter for the All-Star Game on Tuesday, told ESPN. “Major League Baseball is turning this game into a joke.”

Teams are averaging 1.37 home runs per game in 2019, up from a record 1.26 in 2017. In all, the league is on pace for 6,660 homers — more than 500 above the 2017 record total. The minor leagues are seeing a comparable explosion.

Do fans have endless, unconditional love for the long ball, no questions asked?

Verlander, in his 15th season, leads all pitchers at the break in home runs allowed with 26, two fewer than he surrendered all of last season. His call-out of MLB for its 2018 purchase of Rawlings, the company that makes the baseballs, was as dramatic as anything that happened during the American League’s 4-3 victory at Progressive Field.

“If any other $40 billion company bought out a $400 million company and the product changed dramatically, it’s not a guess as to what happened,” Verlander said. “We all know what happened. [Commissioner Rob] Manfred, the first time he came in [in 2015], what’d he say? He said, ‘We want more offense.’ All of a sudden he comes in, the balls are juiced? It’s not coincidence. We’re not idiots.”

Manfred acknowledges that the baseballs in use might be different than before, attributing it to the fact they’re handmade from natural products and that “variations” are, therefore, inescapable. But he categorically denies the league has purposely steered any changes in process in order to pump up long-ball frequencies and distances.

The league has determined, with the help of independent reports it commissioned, that there’s less “drag” on the ball this season. How to interpret that is a wide-open discussion.

“They could not conclude why that is,” Manfred said at a meeting of Associated Press Sports Editors last month. “But they did have some theories.”

White Sox reliever Evan Marshall recently offered his own.

“It has something to do with the restitution of the coefficient,” he said facetiously. “Yeah, it’s over my head.”

But Marshall believes the baseballs have received “some kind of modification.” He joins an ever-growing list of pitchers, including the Cubs’ Yu Darvish, who’ve publicly noted some sort of change.

“In 2017, the ball was flying a lot,” Darvish said. “But now I feel it’s more than that.”

Several pitchers weighed in on the topic at All-Star media day after a news conference at which Verlander, sharing the dais with National League starter Hyun-jin Ryu and managers Alex Cora and Dave Roberts, threw the juiced-ball issue on the table. A question was put to all four: Is baseball, a game of change and cycles, ever going to move away from emphasizing the home run?

“Are you asking about the baseballs or the game?” Verlander quipped.

The Mets’ Jacob deGrom rolled his eyes when asked if the balls he throws are different this year.

“It seems pretty obvious,” he said. “I mean, doesn’t it?”

The Yankees’ CC Sabathia, 38, retiring at season’s end, was in Cleveland, his old stomping ground, to throw out the first pitch. At first, he brushed the question aside.

“It is what it is,” he said. “What do you want me to say?”

But Sabathia relented.

“Sure, they feel a little different,” he said. “Of course they’re different. There’s no other way to explain what’s going on.”

Purely from an entertainment point of view, will it ever get to be too much?

And what about the game’s credibility? Whether the league is willfully complicit, the widening skepticism in its ranks is Manfred’s shame. It doesn’t begin to compare with predecessor Bud Selig’s shame, which is, perhaps needless to say, the Steroid Era.

“But it’s probably not the best look,” the Brewers’ Brandon Woodruff said.

Sunday at Guaranteed Rate Field, Cubs manager Joe Maddon put his signature spin on the issue.

“They could easily have stamped ‘Titleist’ on the side of this thing, as opposed to whatever,” he said. “It’s all true. There’s no getting around it. It’s absolutely true. Just the way the ball has been flying.

“But without question, there’s a difference.”

Contributing: Daryl Van Schouwen, Gordon Wittenmyer