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How MLB’s baseball meddling is affecting the ALCS

A player’s critique of human strike zones is often a plea for consistency. Players seldom call out a bad game from a home plate umpire, but rather refrain that they want to see the same pitch called the same way an entire game. A ball called a strike is less of a problem within a particular game if the same pitch is called a strike in every inning.

In a lot of ways, I think that’s how players and teams feel about the baseball this October too. Baseball Prospectus has done pretty solid research that indicates the baseball is behaving differently this postseason, FanGraphs writer Devan Fink has perhaps the best analysis showing that exit velocity, launch angle and xwOBA are almost identical to the regular season despite fewer balls leaving the park, and even the players themselves smell something funny:

The one piece of evidence that sticks the most with me is when Cardinals manager Mike Schildt let us sneak a peek behind the curtain at internal analysis of the baseball:

“Our front-office analytical group is saying the ball’s not traveling at about a 4½-foot difference.