Mets Coach Eric Chavez Says Players Suggested Juiced Balls Being Used on National TV

The members of the New York Mets told Eric Chavez they thought the ball would travel differently for the nationally televised game on May 1.

The Mets scored the most points they have had this year in that game.

Chavez told Tim Healey that he thought the concerns were legitimate.

He said that the balls that weren't hit as hard shouldn't have happened. The ball was moving better. We lined it up with what the analytics were telling us after the eye test.

Chavez mentioned some of the numbers.

He said that they have been hitting balls at the right launch angle. We are hitting balls 95, a little less hard than the other balls, and those balls are traveling on Sunday night.

Business Insider reported last November that MLB used two different baseballs in the same season.

MLB had to use baseballs that were made differently than the ones they were going to use in 2021.

Bradford William Davis @BWDBWDBWD

Dr. Meredith Wills, a @sabr award winning physicist analyzed over 100 MLB baseballs across 15 parks and made at 2 different weights. MLB told teams the lighter balls were deader and met new performance standards. So the heavy balls (lol) were quite the find. pic.twitter.com/779HD4z1vA

There are more questions about whether MLB is deadening the baseballs after the offensive numbers to start the 2022 season. The league-wide wOBA fell from.314 in 2021 to.305 in 2022. The percentage is on pace to fall for the third year in a row.

Matthew Pouliot @matthewpouliot

Lifetime OPS.682 - Deivi Cruz.679 - Dee Strange-Gordon.676 - MLB teams in 2022.675 - Miguel Cairo.673 - Yuniesky Betancourt

.672 - Neifi Perez

The rise of home runs in recent years wasn't a good outcome, unlike when an offensive explosion helped boost baseball's popularity in the wake of the 1994 strike. That was accompanied by an increase in walks and strikeouts, the other two of which were true outcomes.

As a result, the ball was not being put in play as much.

One could argue that making a ball that doesn't travel as far would help address the problem. The players would have to be informed of that course of action.

The players are left in the dark and searching for answers.

Theories will abound until MLB is more forthcoming on this topic.