This story is featured in the 3Q issue of the PitchBook Private Market PlayBook.
Major League Baseball's All-Star Week is a three-day exhibition intended to showcase the best that America's pastime has to offer. And that was true again in July, with young sluggers Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Pete Alonso starring in a wildly entertaining Home Run Derby before the American League held on to beat the National League, 4-3, for its seventh consecutive All-Star Game victory.
But it was a pitcher, Houston Astros ace Justin Verlander, who might've drawn the most attention. A day before the star-studded game, he ripped into MLB for its perceived role in manufacturing a baseball that many say is behind the league's unprecedented home-run barrage. Back in 2017, Boston Red Sox lefty David Price, then-Tampa Bay Rays standout Chris Archer and a host of others began speaking out on differences in the baseball—when batters leaguewide combined to set a single-season home run record—but Verlander, a future Hall of Famer, publicly touted a full-blown conspiracy theory in an expletive-laden tirade.
"It's a f---ing joke," Verlander told ESPN. "Major League Baseball's turning this game into a joke. They own Rawlings, and you've got [MLB commissioner Rob] Manfred up here saying it might be the way they center the pill." (The pill is the rubber ball located in the center of the baseball.)
"They own the f---ing company," he continued. "If any other $40 billion company bought out a $400 million company and the product changed dramatically, it's not a guess as to what happened. We all know what happened. Manfred the first time he came in, what'd he say? He said we want more offense. All of a sudden he comes in, the balls are juiced? It's not coincidence. We're not idiots."
Why the outrage? In 2019, the league has already shattered the combined single-season home run record. And with 289 home runs entering Wednesday, the Minnesota Twins have already eclipsed the team single-season home run record (267) set by the New York Yankees last year. The 2019 Yankees are close behind, with 287 home runs as well.
"If any other $40 billion company bought out a $400 million company and the product changed dramatically, it's not a guess as to what happened. We all know what happened. [...] We're not idiots."Yet Manfred, who succeeded Bud Selig as commissioner in 2015, has denied knowingly changing the baseballs.
"If we make a decision to change the baseball, you're going to know about it before we change the baseball," he said in a press conference the day after Verlander's comments.
"[MLB] has done nothing, given no direction for an alteration in the baseball," he added. "As a matter of fact, we commissioned an independent study to make clear that there has been no intentional alteration in the manufacturing process. The biggest flaw in that logic is that baseball somehow wants more home runs.
"If you sat in owners' meetings and listened to people talk about the way our game is being played, that is not the sentiment among the owners for whom I work. There is no desire on part of ownership to increase the number of home runs in the game. To the contrary, they're concerned about how many we have."
So how is private equity involved in this controversy? Let's take a step back....MORE
