New baseball bat rule for high schools.

[99topdawg]

The NFH$, for $ome reason, decided that, starting in 2028, HS baseball will now be allowing the use of drop 4, 5, and 6 bats? It's going to completely change the game. Not a fan. The coefficient of restitution on the bats will remain the same, but the bat speed will increase dramatically. In the past, they have "softened" the ball, taking the ball exit speed ratio to 55.5 percent. I strongly doubt that this will happen to offset it, but I can't wrap my head around the need for this. Came totally out of the blue.

Forget about safety. How about the number of hits/reach on errors there will be now. And pitch count? Need more guys to pitch because there will be more hits, etc. Don't have guys to pitch? Throw out a shitty 8th grader, that'll work. Who's pitching tomorrow? Dunno. Used everybody up for the week. Screw that. I have to pitch against varsity guys and getting embarrassed every time I pitch? F it. I'm not going out next year. Numbers in baseball are already declining exponentially. I like to think I'm a pretty level-headed guy, but this is total bullshit. Maybe at the JV level where you have a 90 pound 8th grader that needs to swing a 32/26, but not D1 kids (not that they would swing a -6, but you get what I'm saying). It's all about the Benjamins.

What's next? A bigger diameter basketball hoop? 5 yards for a 1st down? Red card in soccer for doing something worth watching?

 

[BryceC]

Yeah I don’t think they need it. I know in my town there is a kid hitting 113 mph exit velo hits as an underclassman. Is he gonna hit them 120 next year?

 

[99topdawg]

In 2001, bats were required to be drop 3 (or less). Not sure when it started, but for a few years before that, you could swing up to a drop 5. Notice anything about the dates in the record book? There's a reason I'm at odds with my AD about creating a records board for baseball. We'd need multiple boards, and we'd need to start a new one in 2028.

 

[Fryowa]

In 2001, bats were required to be drop 3 (or less). Not sure when it started, but for a few years before that, you could swing up to a drop 5. Notice anything about the dates in the record book? There's a reason I'm at odds with my AD about creating a records board for baseball. We'd need multiple boards, and we'd need to start a new one in 2028.

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I have plenty of thoughts on the topic and I'll expound on it when I get more time, but I'm in the camp who thinks NFHS should go wood bats and get it over with.

There are several arguments against it but the main one is it would be too expensive because you'd go through tons of bats every year.

I have a friend who coached in Canada for a while after college because that's where his wife was from and they moved there. Ontario is wood bat in high school and lots of places there are. He's a fan of the idea now, and said that bats get broken at the HS level WAY less than you'd think.

The expense argument is way overblown, IMO for a lot of reasons. When I was coaching varsity I got $1,000 the first year because all the bats we had were probably 4-5 years old. After that I got $600/year to rotate replacements. I could buy one really expensive bat or 5 shitty ones...it was up to me how we used the money. I've also asked a friend's kid who played a few years of indie ball how much his bats cost. He was playing in the American Association for Lincoln and the team bought them game bats, he had to pay for any extras. He said the bats he bought were the same ones he used in games and they were about $70. Doing the math, as a HS coach where I was at I could get about 8 new bats every year that were good enough to be used at the professional level. Any kid big enough and good enough to break bats on the regular is going to have their own supply anyway. Those kids have $1,000 worth of metal bats right now, they'd just have $1,000 worth of wood bats instead.

And let's not pretend that if HS went wood that the prices would get more expensive. There'd be a huge brand new market and anytime a market gets flooded prices drop because of competition and new supply. On top of the bats that you'd buy as a coach, you and I both know that 9 out of 10 kids is gonna have to have their own personal 3 bats anyway because they all think they're Mike Trout and having their own sticks makes them way better hitters...

Make NFHS wood bat only, drop 3, and be done with it. Who knows...maybe I might even start liking JH/HS baseball again if I got to hear a crack instead of a ping.

 

[Fryowa]

In 2001, bats were required to be drop 3 (or less). Not sure when it started, but for a few years before that, you could swing up to a drop 5. Notice anything about the dates in the record book? There's a reason I'm at odds with my AD about creating a records board for baseball. We'd need multiple boards, and we'd need to start a new one in 2028.

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Also...Nic Ungs (who played at UNI, made AAA, spent a decade in the minors, and is now the Hawks' director of operations) struck me out 3 times in one game in high school. I did manage a ground out to 1B in my last AB though because that's how late I was on his gas.

Maybe I shoulda had a drop 5 bat.