EVP of Baseball Operations Morgan Sword and league commissioner Rob Manfred hold a press conference. (Photo by Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images)
Ye have heard that it hath been said: chicks dig the long ball. But how many longballs, exactly, should chicks get to dig? eyeblack obtained correspondence between MLB executives, league-commissioned scientists tasked with studying the baseball, and leadership from Rawlings—MLB’s exclusive baseball manufacturer—revealing that the league has, at very least, attempted to engineer the baseball with a number in mind.
On October 17, 2019, current executive vice president Morgan Sword, instructed Rawlings executives to build and maintain a baseball capable of supporting what he called a “target leaguewide home run rate,” an email you can read in full here: