In an article leading up to the changes in enforcement, I covered the potential impact the crackdown would have on offense with a focus on the effect of spin rates on batter performance.

Cubs president Jed Hoyer, for example, called the impact of the sticky substance enforcement “a huge variable” in determining which players Chicago could target at the July 30 trade deadline. But there has been one outstanding question all along: How will this impact offense? In a year that started with some of the lowest batting averages in baseball history and with run scoring heavily concentrated in home runs, that was of the utmost importance in the minds of baseball-followers, including those who work for the league and for teams. I touched a little bit on one of these outcomes - whether it was fair to ask pitchers to alter their stuff dramatically in the middle of a season - in a July 2 article on Garrett Richards, who claimed that he needed to try “to figure out how to pitch again” post-enforcement. The crackdown has had plenty of consequences, all of which have theoretically had a significant impact on the game.

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