New baseball bat standards next year mean teams may have to adapt to a less-offensive game

Monday, March 07, 2011
by Matt Porter

Wellington baseball coach Scott Riddle knows there will be plenty of players on his team next year who will have to figure out a different way to contribute.

Beginning Jan. 1, a new baseball bat performance standard already in use by the NCAA will be adopted by high schools nationwide. The bats, which are likened to wooden bats, are supposed to be safer for players while providing fewer cheap hits and home runs.

Suffice to say, it will take some getting used to.

"It will take batters six through nine out of the equation, for the most part," Riddle said. "You can pitch around the one or two guys in the lineup that can really hit. You'll have to rely on defense and pitchers that get a lot of ground balls.

"I'm not real excited about it at all."

The new regulations, created by the National Federation of State High School Associations, mean composite baseball bats, which have replaced the familiar aluminum and alloy metal bats over the past few years, must perform like traditional bats made of solid ash wood. The new bats will have thicker, less responsive walls and smaller sweet spots.

That means good news for pitchers, such as Palm Beach Central senior Bobby Poyner.

"The guys that come back from college say they're worse than wood," said Poyner, the Broncos' ace left-hander. "The new bats, they're bad. I'm happy, though. It helps me out a lot."

Part of the change came because the bats currently in use can actually become more potent for hitters over time.

The bats allowed this year are BESR-certified, and next year, all bats must be BBCOR-certified. BESR, which stands for Ball Exit Speed Ratio, measures the rate at which a ball comes off a bat. It does not take into consideration how the bat performs over time. Because the composite bats improve with use, the BBCOR (Batted Ball Coefficient of Restitution) standard takes that into account. A handful of composite bats fall in line with next year's regulations - a list is provided to umpires, who must check each team's bats before the first pitch of every game.

Today's composite bats are made from carbon, graphite and Kevlar fibers that are weaved, wrapped or injected with other materials, like metals. Players and after-market "bat doctors" discovered the break-in process could be accelerated by compressing, or "rolling" the bats. Researchers eventually learned that the ball was bouncing off the bat at higher-than-normal speeds.

"There's no such thing as a safe sport," NFHS Baseball Rules Editor Elliot Hopkins said. "We just try to minimize the risk. Of the half-million people who play varsity high school baseball, our [serious injury] numbers are ridiculously low."

Still, injuries happen.

A 16-year-old San Francisco-area high school pitcher was put into a medically induced coma for more than two weeks after he was hit by a line drive in a game last March. He recovered, and the league switched to wood bats for the remainder of the season. The NFHS adopted the new BBCOR standard in July.

"I got 20 emails about that," Hopkins said. "There's not a serious injury that goes by we don't hear about within 24 to 48 hours."

Some area coaches feel the new rules are an overreaction.

"I haven't seen a pitcher get hit with a line drive, ever," said Riddle, who played in college and has coached high school baseball since 1988. "Not to say it can't happen, because it could tonight."

Riddle, who has tested the new bats, said the bats feel the same, but likened the performance to hitting a golf driver with the head cover on. "When you put the barrel on it, there's not that much of a difference. The difference is when you catch it on the fists or catch it a little off the barrel. It doesn't go anywhere," Riddle said.

That will make it harder for some players to contribute offensively. Power pitchers will be even more dominant, middle infielders will be more important, and bunting and base running will be even more vital to scoring runs.

But despite the potential loss of offense, like many other coaches, Santaluces coach Nick Franco said he really won't need to change his philosophy when the new bats arrive.

"I'm already a believer [that] good pitching and good defense is the key to winning."