Crack In the Bat

“They are terrible,” said junior outfielder Shawn Pleffner. “They are worse than wood.  BBCOR is horrible.”

Following a season in which the offense of the university baseball squad was downright prodigious, scoring more than 10 runs per game, the NCAA issued new bat regulations.  They went into effect prior to the 2011 baseball season.

The main reason for the change was safety concerns, but many Spartans are unhappy with the new rules.

The biggest change with the new model is a thicker wall, which drastically reduces the “trampoline effect” off an aluminum bat, making it more like connecting with a wooden bat.

“I’ve been told that on a 300-foot shot,” head coach Joe Urso explained, “[the new model] takes about 30 feet off of it.”

The change is an obvious advantage for pitchers, as it will take a much more fluent swing to connect solidly with a pitch. Coach Urso is wholeheartedly in favor of the change, though, as it levels out competition and makes the game more interesting.

“They’ve done a good job with these bats and we’ve got a real baseball game again,” he said.

“We want to get back to pitching and defense. That’s what has always won championships, and always won World Series titles.”

Pleffner, a transfer from Tallahassee Community College, was a highly-sought-after recruit by Urso and his staff. He is 6-foot 4-inches tall, brought in to succeed as a middle-lineup power hitter.

“The bat seems to perform like it did back when I played, in the late 80s early 90s,” Urso, who played four years at UT, explained.

“With last year’s model bat, Shawn Pleffner is hitting into the third tier of the 90-foot screen around the field. We give him the new model and he’s barley getting it over the yellow cap for a home run.”

With safety as the main reason for decreasing the velocity of the ball coming off the bat, it should be noted that while this is a major change, these bats are still aluminum. The bats still perform better than a wooden bat.

“It’s not as good as the bats we had before, but it’s not a wood bat so it’s still going to go further than a wooden bat,” transfer junior Drew Jones explained. “We’re changing our swings and adjusting to the bats.”

In years past, a pitch could get onto the hands of a hitter, or get hit off the end of the bat, yet would still have enough behind it to get to the deepest parts of the field.

With the new model, hitters are going to be less rewarded for not hitting the ball well, meaning that it will take the hitter putting a good swing on the ball and hitting it off the “sweet-spot” of the bat.

“You’re seeing guys improve their swings because they can’t get away with some of the things they could last year,” Urso said.

“You could miss hit balls last year and they’d still go 300, 350 feet. With this bat you have to have a good, short swing and hit it right for it to go.”