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Wooden Bats are major league
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Wooden Bats are major league
and College baseball is still little league by Rich Maloney
You must be a novice if you use aluminum bats? Many major league scouts cannot measure a players true potential to move into the professional leagues while colleges use aluminum bats. Baseball is probably the only college program that doesnt allow straight player progression into a professional league. The minor leagues are full of young talented little league players because colleges are being too cheap to bring back wood bats into their programs. It is all about saving a few dollars.
Yes, the cost is less collegially but the price a potential major league player will pay going through the minor league system only to find out that real major league players only use wood and they cannot compete to play well with a wood bat. Hey Mom, guess what college did for me? It made me a glorified college Ping Head
Thats right an Aluminum bat god. Okay, maybe it is not that bad. Although it did allow all those hot dog and soda vendors to cash in having the draw of large crowds looking to see all those Ping homeruns. Fans just love to watch all those high scoring college baseball games.
A non-wood bat or aluminum bat by comparison to basketball would be like lowering the rim to 7 foot instead of regulation 10 feet, get the picture. Got good dribble
. How would all the Hoopers (basketball folks) like it if all of a sudden their college programs shortened the height of the rim? I wonder how long it would take to become proficient for players from age7 to 21 who play on a 7 rim then have to switch to a 10 rim to turn pro. Hum??? Got you thinking didnt I. Yes, we could have progressive dunk games and scores that ranged in the 200 or more points range. Isnt this what you want to see?
While the wood bat is the essence of major and minor league baseball aluminum will be the root of baseball evil to the college player looking to progress into professional baseball.
Is there any merit in the use of aluminum bats in college baseball? Lets digress a bit further if that is possible, to find out if there is any true merit of aluminum bats in college baseball.
When walking into a college baseball stadium, there is one sound that echoes that is never heard in professional baseball parks. Ping! That's the sound of an aluminum bat striking the ball, creating an unmistakable difference between the major leagues and the collegiate level baseball. But it wasn't always this way. Aluminum bats were first introduced to NCAA college baseball in 1974 as a "temporary" stop-gap solution to athletic departments soaring budget costs.
Athletic departments realized the cost savings that the more durable aluminum bats brought to their college program. The monetary savings from using aluminum bats was indisputable when taking a look at how often wooden bats break. Even though aluminum bats can cost up to five times their wooden counterparts, a player would undoubtedly go through many more than five wood bats in a season. As a result, the temporary solution became permanent.
Is this authentic baseball or just a con game? Despite the cost savings, many coaches and players still prefer wood bats. Wood bats give the game more credibility and allow the game to be played as in the majors.
Just how different is the college baseball game since the introduction of aluminum bats?
Hitters have a distinct advantage with aluminum bats because when a player is jammed on an inside pitch, the rigidness of the aluminum bat allows more hits to flare and fall in front of the outfielder. Such as Texas league bloop singles or more commonly known to little league as bloop hits. The most pronounced differences are when a baseball is hit off the same area on a bat it will travel farther when hit with an aluminum bat.
To compensate for these conditions, this forces pitchers to constantly pitch outside to college batters. But this in turn has the batters crowding the plate and the better hitters will simply hit that outside pitch the other way, instead of pulling it like the pitcher wants.
In the major leagues, if you make a good pitch inside, most of the time you're rewarded, by effectively causing an infield pop out or ground out. But beware there are a few players that absolutely smoke inside pitches for homeruns.
Several college players I have spoken to have commented saying they have seen the difference first-hand. The differences in power between aluminum and wood bats have been seen from playing in wood-bat leagues, during the summer, then returning to aluminum bats for spring college play. With wood, sometimes you really think you hit a ball good and it's caught at the warning track," With metal bats, sometimes you think, 'Oh I missed that one, it's going to be caught,' and all of a sudden it sails over the fence."
Professional teams are not fans of aluminum bats due to these effects. It becomes harder for scouts to measure a pitcher since throwing inside is not as commonplace in the college game. Similarly scouts are also forced to evaluate how they see a college power hitter because some of that power just might be due to the bat and not the player swinging it.
If the NCAA would force colleges to readopt the wood bat more pro-scouts would make less mistakes in player evaluation. It would be clear who could hit a baseball and who could not. Today it is somewhat sketchy due to what I call the Aluminum Bat Syndrome.
A college game with wood bats would be different than the high powered games seen today. The college baseball game would be much more based off pitching, defense and base running speed. One of the most famous examples of high powered games played would be the 1998 championship game between Arizona State and USC, in which the Trojans prevailed by a score of 21-14.
Why arent we switching back to wood? With all of this evidence against aluminum bats, it might seem that a push for the reinstatement of wood bats would have already happened. But the monetary constraint is not the only factor that keeps wood bats from becoming the bat of choice in college. While some believe that a return to wood bats would help the sport, others are convinced aluminum bats have contributed to the popularity of the current college baseball game. People like homeruns, people like excitement, and right now, college baseball is at an all-time high in terms of interest. You look at the attendance numbers in the super regionals and in Omaha's at site of the College Baseball World Series and that is largely attributed to the homerun earned on aluminum bats.
The NCAA needs to get back to basics. If the NCAA were to decided to switch back to the wood bat, the players would be grateful.
Now let us answer one of the original questions of is there merit in colleges using aluminum bats other than a cost savings to their programs and does it help the baseball player? The answer is No, aluminum bats do just what they were intended to do, not break the piggy bank of local town little league budgets. I am sorry folks, the NCAA needs to force colleges back to the plate and return to wood bats. Lets help our baseball players progress not regress. College is supposed to teach us how to progress upward to the professional level and wood bats will help our pitchers and batters alike do so.
Else we can fix basketball like baseball as I originally mentioned and have 7 foot rims. Just kidding
Yours in sports, Rich Maloney
badgame.wav
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