As long as MLB’s official baseballs are hand-stitched, they won’t be 100% identical.
This presents a problem for the meticulous data collection in this game. We can’t expect all pitch data to be 100% accurate if the baseball itself is inconsistent.
It’s safe to reason that no two baseballs will be identical — which might be a good thing, if differences can help combat the drastic effects of baseball at elevation.
Barton Smith is a mechanical and aerospace engineering professor at Utah State University, and is know in baseball circles as the “seam tamer” as mentioned on his Twitter account.