Climate experts warn MLB that home run numbers will heat up with rising temperatures: “Global warming is juicing home runs in Major League Baseball"

Ahead of the 2023 MLB season, the league announced a number of new measures that would be taking place. Among them were new restrictions on defensive shifts, larger bases, and a pitch clock.

The new measures were designed to stimulate offense and reduce game time, which lasted over three hours on average last season.

However, a flurry of early-season home runs has led some fans to suspect that the MLB might be "juicing" baseballs to further advance their goal of extending run production around the league. "Juicing" is a term that can be used to denote any number of measures that could have taken place.

After a recent game at Fenway Park that featured five home runs in total, as well as 13 home runs by the San Francisco Giants, fans are really starting to wonder.

In a recent piece for AP Press, writer Seth Borenstein decided to get some scientific input on why so many balls are flying out of the yard this season. Borenstein quoted Dartmouth climate scientist Justin Mankin, who recently helped publish a bulletin for the American Meterological Society that examined climactic effects on MLB games.

"“Global warming is juicing home runs in Major League Baseball,” - Justin Mankin, Dartmouth College

The report, which took into account hundreds of thousands of MLB games, concluded that hotter weather yields more home runs. Essentially, hot air molecules move faster, in stark opposition to the dense molecular makeup of cooler air.

The study basically concluded that since 2010, over 500 home runs could be attributed directly to climate conditions. Of the 62 home runs that Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees hit last season, more came in July than any other month.

"Is climate change making it easier to hit a home run in MLB? A new study says yes" - Bloomberg Green

Global warming could have even more adverse effects on the MLB

The broad scientific consensus is that the Earth is warming at an alarming rate due to human activity.

If projections are to be believed, the world will be significantly warmer on average by mid-century, and there will also likely be lots more home runs by then too.

If climate change reaches a serious enough point, an increased number of home runs will be the least of our concerns. With several teams located in scalding hot climates anyways, fans better get used to seeing a lot more home runs in the coming decades.