Price calls out MLB for deadening baseball: 'Pitchers knew all along'

Major League Baseball has slightly deadened the baseball, according to a report from The Associated Press, and one starting pitcher is noting the hypocrisy of the move.

"Did I see MLB is 'slightly' deadening the baseball?!" Los Angeles Dodgers left-hander David Price asked via his Twitter. "I thought MLB said (the ball) hadn't been juiced? ... Pitchers knew all along!"

The former Cy Young winner and five-time All-Star also added he was "happy to see (MLB) attempting to go back to the regular baseball."

A fellow superstar also weighed in, replying to Price:

The move to deaden the baseball comes after a record amount of home runs were hit in 2017. That record was subsequently broken in 2019, with players combining to hit 6,776 homers in the regular season.

According to the report, MLB sent an internal memo that indicated baseballs that travel 375 feet or further will fly 1 or 2 feet shorter than the juiced ball of recent years.

Similarly, five more teams will be installing humidors in their ballparks, lifting the total number of clubs with humidity-controlled storage spaces for baseballs to 10. The Colorado Rockies, Arizona Diamondbacks, Seattle Mariners, New York Mets, and Boston Red Sox currently have humidors installed. The new teams were not named.

Rob Manfred and MLB denied any changes to the baseball over the years, stating that any differences fell within the league parameters. The league eventually commissioned an investigation, which found that the ball did have less drag, specifically blaming the seam height. Other independent tests indicated that the coefficient of restitution - or the ball's bounciness - had also changed.