Reposted from espn.go.com
Home runs are down at the 2011 College World Series -- way down. Headed into the start of the finals on Monday in Omaha, Neb., only seven home runs have been hit in 12 games, compared to 32 in 14 games in 2010.
This dramatic power outage coincides with the cross-town move from Rosenblatt Stadium to TD Ameritrade Park. The dimensions of the two parks are virtually the same, and the change of venue has nothing to do with the drop in home runs. Nor is it due to an isolated cluster of unusually strong pitching performances.
The difference is in the (BBCOR) bats.
On Jan. 1, the NCAA implemented a long-anticipated new standard for regulating the performance of bats. The NCAA originally sent a memorandum to bat manufacturers on Sept. 16, 2008, explaining the intention to achieve “wood-like performance in non-wood bats.” The details of how the NCAA bat standards changed are rather involved, but the net effect is quite simple: The bats are less “bouncy,” and balls come off the bats slower.
According to Dr. Alan Nathan, a baseball physicist who also serves as a member of the NCAA Baseball Research Panel, the NCAA changed the way it measures bats in order to provide a more consistent performance limit (for a detailed explanation of the old and new measurement methods, read Dr. Nathan's article). The limit for non-wood bats was set at a level that is just barely “bouncier” than the bounciest wood bats available.
Nathan’s research has indicated that restricting bats via the new standard lowers the batted ball speed by about 6 mph for a typical fly ball of 380-400 feet.
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