Former Rockies right-hander Jason Jennings chuckled at the absurdity of the question.
“Yes, of course, the humidor made a difference,” he said. “It 100% made a difference. For pitchers, it was about surviving.”
“I didn’t have an issue with it before, and I can see the value of it now,” said Dr. Meredith Wills, a sports data scientist who has a Ph.D. in astrophysics. “We’ve seen how it’s worked in Colorado and Arizona with dry conditions. The humidor, in more humid areas, will end up drying out the baseballs.
So, after the 2001 season, when McGregor asked Rockies employees for suggestions to help make the organization better, Cowell started brainstorming. The idea for a humidor came to him during a hunting trip at 10,000 feet. “Baseballs at sea-level feel still a little bit softer and a little bit easier to grip than they do here,” Freeland said. “And in my opinion, by the time the balls get out of the humidor and sit in those bags where they’re stored pregame, it doesn’t have effect.
Pre-humidor, the Rockies’ batting average at Coors was .328 and they hit 128.3 homers per season. Post-humidor, the average fell to .295 and home runs tumbled to 103.2 per season.In response to the so-called “steroid era,” MLB implemented league-wide performance-enhancing drug testing in 2003. For Jennings, and other Rockies pitchers of the pre-humidor era, the biggest problem wasn’t that baseballs carried farther at altitude. Their complaint was that they couldn’t get a proper grip on the ball.
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