Everyone loves scandals no matter what profession or at what level. And no one is above being scrutinized whether it’s a national politician or a local preacher.

One of the hottest debates in the sports world – especially Major League Baseball, is the ball itself.

Using such adjectives like juiced- players, coaches, and fans believe something has changed about the baseballs being used today.

The reason why is the number of home runs being hit throughout both the American and National League as the MLB is on pace this season to see close to 6,700 balls sent into the bleachers.

If that number stands, it will be almost 1,000 more than when players like Mark McGuire, Barry Bonds, and Sammy Sosa were all accused of using steroids in blasting many home runs during their heyday.

There were 5,693 of those home runs hit in the Steroids Era.

Probably many can get on board with the ‘juiced’ baseball train especially after Monday night’s All-Star Home Run competition in which over 300 balls were taken over the wall.

I was reading an AP article this week by Tim Dahlberg where MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred was questioned about the baseballs. His response made a lot of sense and here is what he said:

“Manipulation of the baseball is a great conspiracy theory. How you manipulate a human-dominated handmade manufacturing process in any consistent way, it’s a smarter human being than I.”

Brought more to light as of late by several top tier pitchers such as Jason Verlander, there might be a little substance to the argument.

But also could it be that baseball is seeing more teams buy the big time sluggers that get unbelievable amounts of money to do precisely what this article is about and that is hit home runs.

I think about the team I pull for in the Atlanta Braves and you have Ronald Acuna Jr., Freddie Freeman, Josh Donaldson, Dansby Swanson, Ozzie Albies, and Austin Riley who can take a pitch yard at any given at-bat and throw in an occasional blast by Brian McCann, Tyler Flowers, and Johan Camargo and its easy to see that teams are going power crazy.

As a pitcher, I can see why they are grasping for straws or explanations to why their ERA’s are going higher and their stats may be not as glimmering as what they want.

The last time I checked, it was the pitcher who was responsible for making sure that they had a pretty good staple of pitches—sliders, curves, change-ups, cutters, and knuckleballs to compliment their blistering fastball.

In today’s game, if a pitcher thinks they can rely on that once over-powering fastball, they have another thing coming.

Hitters are sitting back salivating and anticipating when that pitch is going to come as big as a watermelon for them to jack over the wall and into the hands of an excited fan who has brought their glove to the ballpark for that purpose.

The bottom line is that there are a whole lot more things going on in Major League Baseball that need to be worried about than a baseball like unreal salaries these monster hitters are getting paid to hit the ball into the grandstands.

I think that even if the ball may be part of the broad picture of all the home runs being hit, it makes the game exciting and more challenging as a player and for a manager or coach.

My advice to these pitchers who are crying over the home runs- play ball! You may need to work harder on your pitch repertoire but it’s what you are getting paid the big bucks to do.