from Amazon
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
College bats
Huge change:
Jeff Sackmann, of CollegeSplits.com, found that college home runs are down by about half from the same point last season. Three percent of batted balls left the park last year, but now the number is 1.7% per batted ball.
...
But there’s a chance the new bat has dampened offense too much. “It’s worse than wood,” one scout said. “Even when [the ball] hits the sweet spot, it doesn’t go anywhere.” It would seem like basic physics. When wood meets ball, the grain in the wood grips the ball and gives it backspin, which leads to loft. Right?Physics professor Alan Nathan is skeptical. As part of the committee that advised the NCAA on the bat change, Nathan initially thought the idea might have had some merit, but then he performed an experiment that showed there was no difference between the spin of a ball off an aluminum bat versus a wood bat. He said the aim of the new bat was to approximate wood with aluminum, not to deaden the bat more than wood.