college pitchers

You are probably right, Andro. The casual fan loves hitting. MLB baseball proved that when they lowered the mound, tighter baseballs and smaller strike zone to encourage more hitting and higher scores...and it put more fannies in the seats.

But I can't help but think that there are many companies that would pick up any revenue losses to schools with the change over to wood. Nike is a good example. They could care less whether it's wood or metal. They will jump into whatever market the bats are in.

I dunno, the way that metal bats are going (have they tried kryptonite yet?), they are going to have to put pitchers in cages. I just don't like to watch an average hitter go yard on a perfect pitch that was down and away. It's like the old days (Prepster will remember this) when you would swing a wood bat against a superball. Those suckers would go a long, long way

 

or course a fan is gonna see a ball coming off a metal bat faster than a wood bat, i was using more of an example if the two bats were swung at exactly the same speed. But in reality that is not the case because a player will not swing a wood bat and a metal bat the same speed.

 

Why Aluminum Bats Perform Better than Wood Bats

According to the scientific studies, higher bat speed is one of several reasons for the increased ball velocity. The others are the "trampoline effect" and the wider sweet spot. Here's a link that explains them.

http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/bats-new/alumwood.html

 

I think the difference between wood and metal - in an actual game - is enormous.

Actually - the two games dont even look remotely similar - and the difference grows each year.

Metal bats grossly distort the game - IMO - and in almost every facet of the game. Like Astroturf used to do.

When all is said and done - it may make for some exciting bash fests - and produce a slew of .400 hitters in college - but it puts our kids at a huge disadvantage if they aspire to play pro ball.

I wish they would eliminate metal bats from every level - and quite frankly - as much as I love the game - I really dont enjoy going to metal bat games anymore.

Just my opinion. :bananalam

 

Metal vs Wood

After coaching the HS season I get a chance to see quite a bit of wood games during the summer and fall. The differences are enormous. Metal games are much longer with a ton of more pitches thrown , a ton of more runs scored , many more errors , alot more hr's and much less moving runners with bunts and hitting behind runners. The typical wood game last around 1-45 min to 2 hours. Some are much shorter. Pitchers can challenge batters inside much more and actually get rewarded for making a good pitch instead of getting hurt with a bloop hit or metal hr. Kids move runners with sac bunts and hit behind runners to move them in scoring posistion. The bottom line is the game is much more fun to watch. When a kid hits a bomb or a seed in the gap you know he put a good lick on it. I would love to see the game go back to the way it was intended to be played. With wood. Im glad my kid is not a pitcher. I feel for every kid on the hill everytime a seed is hit back up the middle with one of these nuclear bats. I have seen kids that couldnt hit it 300' with wood hit .350 in HS by dinking good pitches just over the head of infielders. The problem is good hitters are not helped by swinging these bats. They are going to hit regardless of what they swing. The problem is kids that cant hit a lick can hit a lick with these bats. The pitchers are pressured 1-9 on most nights instead of 1-5 not because everyone has a good line up. But because everyone has a $400 bat.

 

Check this out..

http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/5697038?FSO1&ATT=HCP&GT1=8297


Frightening injuries prompt move away from aluminum bats

OAK LAWN, Ill. (AP) - Bill Kalant never had a chance to get out of the way of the baseball that put him, as doctors told his father, "on the cliff of death."

The pitcher's parents, sitting a few feet away, heard the familiar "ping" of ball hitting metal bat, followed an instant later by a sickening thud, but never caught a glimpse of the ball. The position of Kalant's body - still bent over from throwing a pitch, his glove near the ground - led coaches to conclude they'd never witnessed a ball hit so hard.
Moments later, the 16-year-old Oak Lawn High School sophomore lost consciousness. Even before he came out of a coma two weeks later, he was thrust into an emotional debate over the use of aluminum bats.

At issue is whether aluminum bats have made baseball unnecessarily dangerous. On one side are those who say baseballs fly off those bats much faster than they do wood bats and have led to severe injuries and, in a handful of cases, death. On the other side are those who say balls travel no faster off aluminum bats and that there is no evidence they put players at greater risk of injury.

Around the country, after decades of using aluminum bats, a small but growing number of college and high school leagues are switching to wood bats.

In Illinois, where Kalant was injured and a college pitcher had his skull fractured last year, the state high school association hopes to put wood bats in the hands of players in several conferences next year to study injuries, run production and costs. And in Chicago, the coordinator of the public school district's high school league says he's seen enough of aluminum bats and wants to switch to wood as soon as possible.

"These aluminum bats have been nothing but bad ... for baseball," said Eddie Curry, who oversees Chicago's public school league. "Some of these kids are afraid stiff of line drives coming back to them, afraid of playing baseball because of aluminum bats."

Earlier this week, an American Legion team in Montana forfeited two games because its opponent would not play with wood bats. The Miles City Mavericks haven't faced aluminum bats in the nearly three years since pitcher Brandon Patch died when a line drive off an aluminum bat struck his head.

Starting next season in North Dakota, every high school team will use wood bats - a move officials say was prompted by discussions that started after Patch's death.

There's no question metal bats have changed the game. Batting averages are higher and there are more home runs in games in which aluminum bats are used.

For example, this season in 31 conference games using wood bats, Franklin Pierce College in New Hampshire hit 10 home runs - compared with 52 homers in 29 non-conference games using aluminum bats.

"The bats, they're trampolines," said the team's coach, Jayson King. "The ball jumps off the bat."

It's the same story in the Great Lakes Valley Conference, a Division II college conference that switched to wood bats in 1998.

"In 1980 with aluminum bats, we had 104 home runs (and) this year the most home runs in our conference was 14," said Irish O'Reilly, the coach at Lewis University in suburban Chicago.

"If your team is using wood and their team is using aluminum, you can't beat them," he said. "It's like David versus Goliath."

A big reason is that aluminum bats have larger sweet spots, the area that produces hard-hit balls.

Curry said part of his push for wood bats is that he thinks they improve players' batting skills - a sentiment shared by many coaches. Ralph Dalton, the coach at St. John the Baptist high school in West Islip, N.Y, noticed the difference when his league switched to wood bats this season.

"It's made them better hitters and better players," Dalton said.

Curry also believes wood bats give players a better chance at making it to pro baseball, which uses wood. And Dalton said one thing is clear: Professional scouts love to watch leagues that use wood bats.

"They get a good, accurate read on how the ball is jumping off the bats," he said.

Are line drives off aluminum bats really traveling faster than line drives off wood bats? Are they making baseball more dangerous?

The answer to the first question, say bat makers and others, is that they used to travel faster - but don't any more. After the 1998 College World Series, in which Southern California beat Arizona State 21-14, the NCAA took some pop out of the bats by setting a 97 mph speed limit at which the ball can come off the bat.

"The exit velocity of the ball cannot exceed coming off the best northern white ash wood bat," said Jim Darby of Easton Sports, a major manufacturer of the aluminum bats.

The second question is tougher to answer. Even though aluminum bats have been widely used since the 1970s, there is scant evidence one way or the other about whether they've added danger to the game.

Statistics, particularly on the high school level, on batted ball injuries are hard to come by because, officials say, there isn't an adequate injury reporting system.

Further, what statistics are available are incomplete. For example, the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission found that between 1991 and 2001 there were 17 players killed by batted balls. But while eight involved metal bats and two involved wood bats, in seven instances the kind of bat wasn't known.

With the pending switch to wood bats in North Dakota, and a study underway comparing injuries among college players using aluminum bats to those playing in wood bat summer leagues, there is hope for some scientific data.

But many coaches and officials insist balls fly off aluminum bats faster than they do wood bats.

"The exit velocity off aluminum bats is dangerous," said Jonathan Harper, associate commissioner of the Northeast-10 Conference, one of the few college conferences in the nation that uses wood bats. "I don't care what it's (exit velocity) set at. It's still metal hitting the ball instead of wood."

At Northern Illinois, coach Ed Mathey believes his pitcher, Mark Badgley, would have caught, deflected or gotten out of the way of the ball that fractured his skull.

"I've never seen a ball come off a wood bat that fast, from a college kid," he said.

Jim McGonigle, spokesman for the Cape Cod League, a wood bat summer league for top college players, said he has no doubt that if the major leagues ever switched to aluminum bats the game would become too dangerous to play.

Today, Bill Kalant moves slowly and his gait is somewhat stiff. The teenager had to relearn everything from walking to tying his shoes. He says his injury is "part of the game" and doesn't see any reason to switch to wood bats.

But Tony Kalant, whose son has never used a wood bat, said it makes sense that the ball that hit his son wouldn't have been traveling as fast if hit by a wood bat.

"You hear that ping and that ball takes off like a rocket," he said. "There is a hell of a difference between a cheap (wood) bat and ones more high tech, where you get that trampoline effect."

"I wouldn't want this to happen to anybody else," he said. "In my heart I think I'd rather see them go back to the wood bats."

 

our TBR buddy rob woodard sure did make clemson look like they were using wood.

congrats, even though you're a heel.

 

Sure the bat makers can claim the ball doesn't come off the bat any faster if the bats are swung with the EXACT SAME BATSPEED AND BAT WEIGHT. What they won't admit is that players can't swing a wood bat with the same batspeed or use a wood bat as light as an aluminum one of the same length. Plus the expanded sweetspot makes it far more likely that an average hitter will hammer a ball that a pitcher can't get out of the way of.