The College Game Is Changing
While we mostly focus on Major League Baseball here on the site, it’s not the only game in town. In fact, while MLB is playing glorified exhibition games in Arizona and Florida, the NCAA is playing games that actually count right now. And, while college baseball doesn’t get the same attention that several other college sports get (especially in March), there is a pretty good reason for each of us to be paying attention to the scores each weekend now – a rule change affecting the type of bats that can be used that may be drastically altering the game at the college level.
The rule essentially governs the type of metal bats that can be used in NCAA games, and requires them to meet a standard of Batted Ball Coefficient Of Restitution. In English, the new bats create a collision between the bat and ball which is not as impactful. When teams began receiving these bats last summer, they immediately noticed the difference, and many coaches predicted steep declines in offensive levels across the sport. There have been about 900 NCAA games played so far this season, so we’re starting to get to the point where we have a decent sample to draw from. Have the bats made a significant impact?
Absolutely. From the twitter feed of the guys over at collegesplits.com, we get these two notes:
New bat update, comparing first 10 days of 2011 vs. first 10 of 2010. 2010: HRs were 2.8% of BIP. 2011: 1.8% of BIP. Huge.
Also, with new bats, run scoring down even more last weekend. Again, thru first 10 days: 2010: 7.5 runs/game. 2011: 6.25 runs/game.
Home runs are down roughly 36 percent, while run scoring is down 14 percent. We’re still dealing with smaller samples than we would like, but as a first glance, the changes seem to be as advertised. The ball is simply not traveling like it did before, and while it’s possible that weather or other factors could be impacting the results, it’s likely that the change in bats is the main driver of the lower levels of offense.
For the average Major League fan, this simply means that you shouldn’t compare raw statistics from this year to previous years when trying to make conclusions about how a player is performing leading up to the draft. For instance, Anthony Rendon is generally considered the best hitting prospect in the draft. As a sophomore last year, he hit .394/.530/.801. So far this year, he’s hitting .393/.514/.643. While the raw power numbers are down, can you eyeball that and tell whether his performance relative to the new league standard is on par? I can’t, and I’d imagine there’s probably only a half dozen people on earth who can.
College data is tricky to begin with. Conferences are not of equal strength, there are some crazy park factors at certain schools, and the quality of the opposing pitcher can be dramatically different on Fridays than during the middle of the week. When you toss in a changing run environment due to alterations in equipment, the data becomes even more difficult to interpret correctly. That isn’t to say it’s useless, but you should tread carefully when drawing conclusions from college stats in general, and doubly so this year. Follow the guys over at Baseball America and College Splits, as they have their finger on the pulse of the game, and will understand how relative performances stack up.
We like data, but it is often used incorrectly. You’re going to see a lot of incorrect usages of college data in the next few months. Keep the new bats, and how they are impacting the game, at the forefront of your mind.
Dave is the Managing Editor of FanGraphs.
Coefficient of resolution? My high school education could have sworn it should be coefficient of restitution…
“We, the undersigned, do hereby resolve to coeffic together…”
Great article! Thanks for bringing this to our attention!
Nice. It’s about time they did this. Aluminum bats were (are) completely out of control.
This had been building up for quite some time. I remember Dick Mills campaigning because his son Ryan was nailed by a comebacker while pitching for AZ state.
IIRC, the “trampoline effect” was one of the reasons you see -3 (and other measurements) posted on bat barrels. That is, a bat’s weight had to correspond to it’s length. That is, you can’t have a 34 inch, 27 oz bat.
Of course, all this was long ago (mid 90’s, IIRC), so I may have have the details mixed up.
They’re still using aluminum bats – it’s the composite ones that are banned.
as they note on their twitter feed, those 10 days are equivalent to 2 months of the MLB season (900 games), so it is not as small of a sample size as it sounds like
But as Dave noted, college ball doesn’t share the relative parity of MLB ball.
I think it should be coefficient of “restitution”, not “resolution”. They have similar restrictions with golf clubs. If you drop a ball and it lands on the face of a driver, it’s only supposed to be able to bounce back up to a certain height.
Shame on me for not completely reading the first post.
Out of curiosity, why can’t colleges simply go to wooden bats?
NCAA’s in bed with the bat companies.
Yep, that’s why.
Wooden bats would be FAR cheaper for college and amateur baseball.
Metal bats, even at the 12U and 10U levels, are out of control. Every 10you on a traveling team carries a $150+ bat.
Seriously, look through baseball catalogs and see what is the big “money maker” in the deal. You can outfit your catcher with high-end stuff for less bucks than a high-end metal bat.
Companies provide top college programs with their product or pay them to use them, and then everyone else follows suit. If Univ of XYZ is using the DragonDestroyerX250, then we have to …
The same old story, For the Love of the Money.
I love woods bats, we play in some wood bat summer leagues/tourneys (HS level). I love it that infielders can show their range, and 3B actually get to make some plays to their left. I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE (I mean really LOVE) it when guys that are used to getting singles and doubles on jam shots or knob shots get their pinkies knocked off with wood bats. It really lets you see just how little (comparative) contact is made on the sweet spot. There’s a reason why so many parents/kids pay for those metal bats where the sweet spot is 4 times as large.
For those that don’t play college+ baseball, it’s the difference of using the skinny yellow wiffle bat versus the big red wombat (that big red wiffle bat with the mega-inflated barrel).
It is funny to watch OF’ers make the adjustment. I’ve seen guys break back hard and end up having to sprint in to make the catch.
The difference at the college level is probably less than the HS level. What this would mean for HS kids, is that the standard-issue team now has just two kids that can really hit. Everyone else … move the OF’s in. Good luck finding some green.
It’s not more expensive to use wood bats. It’s just less profitable to bat manufacturers that help fund major college programs and make quite a bit as a result.
Cost would be my guess.
I think robdeer’s right. Metal bats are not only cheaper to manufacture, they also don’t have to be replaced nearly as often. And I would think that even top-shelf NCAA baseball programs don’t have anything near the equipment budget of an MLB franchise or even an MLB-subsidized MiLB franchise.
I am highly doubtful that there are metal bats that are used for more than one season.
Since you cannot use any bat that has any chink or dent in it, that is especially so.
Tampering used to be a huge problem. Guys would take already jacked up metal bats and “supersize” them. When the bats are doing steroids, there’s a problem. *grin*
Seriously as a coach at the HS and youth levels, it is amazing that these $300+ bats don’t last longer.
At this point, the “serious kids” have a $150 BP bat, and $300+ game bat, b/c you don’t want to take all the jolt out of your game bat with BP damage.
I think you’ll find most HS and college programs replace almost all of their bats annually.
If metal bats are cheap to manufacture, it certainly does not reflect in the price. When I was in HS there was simply the “Green Easton” and before that the “Black Magic”. Now, in catalogs, there are AT LEAST 100 bats in the $200+ range.
They ain’t playing around. Just like golf and drivers, everyone wants to buy performance.
As someone who played college ball (albeit for a D-III program), a metal bat has roughly a 3-6 week shelf life. However, they come with warranties so you essentially get about 12 weeks per bat purchase.
Bear in mind, I played in Minnesota which is not ideal weather for bats.
And they run waaaaay more than $150 a piece. I would expect the cost to be roughly equal aside from the adjustment period when more wood bats would be broken.
that would require the use of too much wood
Little League, high school etc., no one uses wooden bats because of cost.
I would think wood composite bats would be a nice compromise, if not at the LL or HS level, then at a collegiate level.
This is actually not true. I’m watching ESPN about a southern cali high school league that banded metal and composite bats after a line drive sent a pitcher into a three week coma and four week rehabilitation process.
You’re saying it’s not true that the reason for Aluminum is cost, or that it’s not true that composite would be a nice compromise because it’s at least as dangerous as aluminum? Or what?
All he’s saying is that the statement that no one uses wood bats at low levels is factually false.
It will interesting to see how players adapt to this change. My guess is that as players begin to learn how these bats handle, offense rebounds some.
I have often wondered why MLB doesn’t just subsidize the cost of wood bats for the NCAA. It seems like a winner for both sides.
And then Dave lets us know that in the first ten days of operation there have been 900 NCAA games.
Oh. That’s a whole lot of bats. Nevermind.
Im a Fla D2 hitting coach, the bat changes everything from recruiting to lineup construction … Pitching and Defense
have any of you checked the price of aluminum bats vs wood bats? A good aluminum bat can be ten times as much as a wood bat. And a good college hitter is going to need more than one aluminum bat per year–they wear out and lose their “juice”.
This has nothing to do with saving money. Aluminum bats are more expensive. It has everything to do with the metal bat contracts. They are feeding DC lobby money into College game.
10 days of NCAA = 900 games, do you have any idea how many bats you would need for the entirety of college baseball to switch? plus, with increased demand the companies could charge more, negating the current price difference… think like the real adam smith a bit more next time
Please compare the cost. (Let’s assume that college programs actually buy their bats, rather than have them provided).
Figure out how many bats each team has. Figure out how many wood bats they’d need.
Do the cost comparison. My money is on wood bats … and not by a close margin.
I suspect something closer to break even and I’m not sure which side would come out ahead, but all in all it would be a justifiable switch from a cost perspective.
but keep in mind, wood bats can and do shatter which can and is dangerous. Metal bats generally crack when they break (though I’ve seen more than a couple shatter).
I really don’t think the cost is the real issue. In Minnesota, club teams use wood bats, and most pay for all the bats witha fish fry or something like that.
wood bats don’t break as often with lower velocity and bat speed. and a good aluminium bat is considerably more expensive than wood.
Also, y they use them for high school in north dakota. ifa high school with 100 students can afford it, I think UCLA will manage.
Previous metal bats actually had their spring improve as time went on (to a point). It was called the bat being “hot.”
That’s another restriction on the bats. The coefficient now is the same as a wood bat. It’s still better to use a metal bat for hitting due to a larger sweet spot, and the amount of force you can generate off the handle, but the change is startling.
There are several DII and Juco leagues using wood bats (Bryce Harper’s was one last year). It’s just cost prohibitive for a non-revenue sport to be universal.
The days of Ok State’s “gorilla ball” are over.
High Schools in California will be required to meet these same bat restrictions by the start of the 2012 season, I believe.
The irony, I believe, is that, say, 30-plus years ago, the argument was that the (then) aluminum bats would offer a cost-savings over wood. That claim, though, has been turned on its head for two reasons: composite (which have largely replaced aluminum) bats are, as mentioned previously, expensive: $300 is not uncommon; more importantly, composite bats have a limited lifetime. The “sweet spot” loses its elasticity over time and the bat loses its “power”. I strongly doubt any college player is using a bat for more than a season, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they use several per season, even if they don’t crack, fracture, etc (in the materials science world the phrase is “fail catastrophically”).
The reason I said composite over aluminum is that the new-school composite bats have more “bounciness” than nearly any metal alloy. And this so-called trampoline effect is what golf and baseball officials have been trying to measure so as to provide guidelines and, ultimately, restrictions.
From conversations I have had with a producer of wood bats, the wood bat makers would have trouble keeping up with the demand. And it would be tough to get everybody on a level playing field with wood bats. Apparently, there is a big difference from the wood bats given to the major leaguers and the wood bats given to minor leaguers. The colleges would either get the scrub bats, or some colleges would pay out the rear for the better bats while others could not.
Level playing field, in regards to wood bat quality, is not the issue (or should not be the issue). It’s about the quality of the game and player safety.
Competitive market will exist, and colleges with more money will buy higher end bats, just as football programs have different qualities of training facilities, equipment, etc.
It will never be “even” in that regard. A company is likely not going to give MidWestern MIssourri State Tech the same deal/price on bats that they give Nebraska or another school that’s going to use those bats in the CWS.
The comment – “the wood bat makers would have trouble keeping up with the demand” >>
ECON 101 — Supply will expand to meet demand.
Not just that, but not every level/organization is going to say “Okay, starting Monday, we’ll only use wood bats.”
By some miracle companies supplied metal bats when they replaced wooden ones, and I’d imagine that happened very quickly through the amateur levels.
Start at the top and work down.
If there’s money to be paid; bats will be made.
That’s sounds sloganish.
BBCOR bats will bring in a new era of High School and College baseball. The days of .500 plus batting averages and 15-18 ball games are over. I think the purist will enjoy the change.
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