NOTHING COSTS MORE THAN IT USED TO:

Baseballs really have been getting extra lift since 2015, and it's not from the exaggerated uppercuts batters are taking, according to a 10-person committee of researchers hired by the commissioner's office.

"The aerodynamic properties of the ball have changed, allowing it to carry farther," said committee chairman Alan Nathan, professor emeritus of physics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

But the panel, which includes professors specializing in physics, mechanical engineering, statistics and mathematics, struck out trying to pinpoint the cause. [...]

"We have to admit, and we do admit, that we do not understand it. We know the primary cause is the change in the drag but we just simply cannot pinpoint what feature of the ball would lead to it," Nathan said during a conference call Wednesday, ahead of the report's release. "Therefore it was probably something very, very subtle in the manufacturing process, but again it has to be pretty subtle, because if it weren't, we would have found it."

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