According to an article in Business Insider, Major League Baseball reportedly used two different baseballs last season and players claim they had no idea, according to Bradford William Davis of Business Insider.

MLB confirmed two different balls were used during the 2021 season but claimed it was due to COVID-19 causing production delays, according to Business Insider. "Every baseball used in a 2021 MLB game, without exception, met existing specifications and performed as expected," the league said in a statement provided to Davis.

Later in the Business Insider article, Major League Baseball said that the reason why this might have occurred was because of COVID-19 which created production delays which forced baseball manufacturer Rawlings to reduce capacity at its manufacturing facility. "Rawlings manufactures Major League balls on a rolling basis at its factory in Costa Rica... Generally, balls are produced 6-12 months prior to being used in a game. Because Rawlings was forced to reduce capacity at its manufacturing facility due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the supply of re-centered baseballs was not sufficient to cover the entirety of the 2021 season. To address this issue, Rawlings incorporated excess inventory into its shipments to Clubs to provide a full complement of baseballs for the 2021 season," from an MLB statement.

According to a Yahoo Sports Article, "Each MLB ball contains a batch code that lets a person know the date the ball was manufactured. Wills said those batch codes showed the ball fluctuated multiple times since 2019. MLB reportedly used the new, lighter version of the ball last October. It then reportedly switched back to the old ball in January 2020 and continued to use that ball as recently as August, according to the batch codes."

Major League Baseball has said it informed the MLBPA it would utilize two different balls in 2021. If the union knew about the change, the players didn't hear about it. According to the story in Business Insider, who talked to 10 players, none of them knew about the two different baseballs that were being used during the previous season.

The impact of MLB using different balls in 2021

It's tough to quantify the impact of MLB using two different balls in 2021, but the implications are significant. Can MLB ensure teams were supplied the same number of new and old balls? How did that impact statistics for each team? If one team received a larger percentage of new balls than most teams, does that explain why players on that team experienced offensive declines? Will a player from that team lose out on millions on the free-agent market because of MLB's tactics? Why in the world did MLB think this was a good or acceptable idea? These are all valid questions.

There's also the issue of gambling. Major League Baseball has obviously embraced in-game gambling in recent years, and not being transparent about the baseballs that are being used during the game could have a massive impact from a gambling perspective. Leaving the important question to be answered: How can bettors trust the league if it is using two different balls? To what lengths will people try to get inside information on which balls are being used in which games?