The actual baseballs themselves, one of which is being held by MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred here, have been the subject of much debate in recent months. (Photo by Cody Glenn/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Last week at the annual general managers meetings, the state of the baseball — the subtle shift in the aerodynamics that resulted in a not-so-subtle spike in home runs — was a top-level topic of conversation both privately between team executives and in meetings with league representatives.

“Obviously the ball last year, it played differently than it had in prior years,” Phillies GM Matt Klentak said. Data analysis as well as studies of the physical baseball showed that drag on the ball was lower in the regular season, resulting in unprecedented power numbers across the sport and a systematic shattering of home run records — all before the postseason ball doubled back and was shown to be less lively.

A’s GM David Forst agreed that “the science and the evidence is indisputable” that the 2019 ball was different enough to have a material impact on the game — but with a champion already crowned for the season that ended last month, front office focuses have (ostensibly) shifted to building the best team possible for 2020: “Obviously our biggest concern is what is the baseball going to be like going forward and how that affects how we evaluate different players.”

“I can only speak for our organization, but what we want is consistency,” Forst said, “and we’ll build a team around that.”

Unfortunately, that kind of predictability might be impossible to come by — at least before the 2020 season. According to league sources, Major League Baseball is not confident that the ball can be made completely standardized and consistent without overhauling the manufacturing process.

This would mean that any changes in the ball’s so-called juiciness to date were unintentional — as Commissioner Rob Manfred has repeatedly insisted — and that the culprit behind the dramatic swings in drag coefficient the past few years remains a mystery to the league, which also happens to have an ownership stake in the company that produces the baseball. Beyond that, it implies that as long as the balls are handmade and comprised of natural materials, MLB might not ever be able to control to a sufficient degree of precision the behavior of the sport’s fundamental object.

“In terms of roster construction, it definitely matters, you’d like to operate in an environment where the equipment is uniform from year to year,” Klentak said.

The problem with an unpredictable “juiciness” of baseballs is severalfold. There’s the issue of player evaluation, what to make of 2019 power numbers or home runs surrendered and what to project for a particular individual going forward.

View photos The unpredictability of baseballs going forward will make it hard to evaluate the numbers of players like Oakland's Mark Canha (20). (Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images) More

“It’s hard to predict just how much of what we see on the field is attributable to the ball,” Angels GM Billy Eppler said.

Rangers GM Jon Daniels compared it (with heavy caveats that the analogy was imperfect for anything other than interpreting data) to the era of rampant PED usage and the ensuing suspicion.

“It’s similar here — how do you evaluate a potential impact on a player’s performance?” he said.

Beyond that, there’s the broader issue of what kind of roster to build — whether to prioritize ground-ball pitchers or bank on 30-homer seasons from undersized middle infielders.

There are more niche and esoteric concerns as well. With the major league ball implemented in Triple-A, home runs at that level skyrocketed in 2019, even as the other minor league levels continued to use a less “juicy” ball. This made for a painful transition for pitchers between levels, confusing farm directors and demoralizing young players.

Our ability to measure fluctuations in the baseball — and understand how that contributes to a particular power environment — is more advanced than it’s ever been. Several GMs cited this increased attention to detail as why we’re even having these conversations.

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