Is the Baseball Juiced?

The alarm bells were being rung loud and clear. The ball is juiced. The ball is juiced. As if you had enough data in the first week of the season. And yet, a number of fairly smart analysts in the fantasy baseball community could be heard saying that in this first week of the fantasy baseball season. And admittedly as we came out of the first weekend of the season, my ESPN dynasty league had five (5) teams with an ERA over 5.00 and in fact one team had a team ERA over 6.00. And poof, that bubble has already been burst. As I write this article tonight, there are only two teams with a team ERA of 5.00 or higher, and in fact there are two teams with ERAs as a staff below 3.00. So what gives? Are the baseballs once again juiced? Or did a very small sample size cause everyone to overreact?

It cannot be argued that the rule changes being implemented for the 2023 baseball season are being felt in a number of ways. Game times have been shaved by over 30 minutes thanks to the new pitch clocks. The fact that pitchers can only make two pickoff attempts per baserunner has already led to a significant increase in stolen bases. Spring training 2023 saw 34% more stolen base attempts than spring training 2021. But do increased stolen bases truly have a large impact on run production? That point has never been proven conclusively and don’t ever forget the 1982 New York Yankees who were designed to use the stolen base to lead baseball in offense. George Steinbrenner went out and brought in speedy Dave Collins and Ken Griffey Jr. only to watch his 1982 club go out and struggle to score runs.

Long before the writing of Moneyball, George Steinbrenner failed to grasp a simpler concept. Though Dave Collins had stolen 79 bases for the Cincinnati Red in the 1980 season, Collins had an abysmal OPS mark because of a pronounced inability to drive the ball with any authority. In his two seasons prior to coming to the Yankees, Collins had produced an OPS of .736 and .735. You have read me state on previous occasions, I don’t even want to know your name unless you can put up an .800 OPS mark. OPS is a very simple computation. It is the sum of your on base percentage added to your slugging percentage. And it holds a perfect correlation to your runs scored and your RBIs in a given season. So far, we do see an increase in OPS numbers throughout baseball in this first week of the season. But again, it is a very small sample size. For the 2022 baseball season, there were only two (2) baseball players with an OPS above 1.00. Through six and in some cases seven games played there are forty-three (43) players with an OPS above 1.00. Does this mean that the offense is 20 times better in the current season? Of course not. Six games played is a very small sample size. We will check back in a week and this number will be at least halved I confidently predict. If it is not, we might have something to look into.

One thing is for certain though. Any increase in stolen bases is an independent factor as to why OPS numbers are running higher than the final numbers for the 2022 baseball season. And if you have watched the New York Yankees in this first week of the season you have noticed that Gleyber Torres has already stolen five bases. But it is of far more relevance that Gleyber has a .789 slugging percentage. Small sample size for certain, but a .789 slugging percentage is not sustainable. These numbers will revert to a more reasonable mean.

Players sprint out of the gate in every baseball season and do things which catch all of the analysts by surprise. Sometimes it is a player having a bounce back season and recapturing a past level of excellence such as what Yoan Moncada is doing. Sometimes it is a player who has never done this before and is experiencing a true breakout given an opportunity. It looks like James Outman of the Los Angeles Dodgers could be one of those players. Wander Franco is another guy doing that very same thing. Garrett Mitchell of the Brewers, Jonathan India of the Reds, Jose Siri of Tampa Bays should be mentioned in a similar vein. But Jorge Mateo of Baltimore, Patrick Wisdom of the Cubs and Brian Anderson of the Brewers give me reason to pause. These don’t look like true breakouts to me. Be cautious with these players and certainly don’t rush out to grab them in a trade.