New BBCOR Bats Will Bring Big Differences to High School Games

A major change is coming this spring to high school baseball as we know it.

Exit the BESR (Ball Exit Speed Ratio) bat and enter the BBCOR (Batted Ball Coefficient of Restitution) bat. The difference promises to shake up high school offenses just as it has at the collegiate level since the change was enforced by the National Collegiate Athletic Association last year.

The change at the high school level, enforced by the National Federation of State High School Associations doesn’t take effect officially until Jan. 1, 2012, but teams across Broward County already are using the new bats to get used to them.

The BESR bats only measured the speed of the ball coming off the bat. The BBCOR bats not only measure the speed of the ball off the bat but also the “trampoline effect” when the ball meets the bat.

“After many scientific studies, we feel like this is the bat that needs to be used,” Elliot Hopkins, the NFHS’s baseball rules editor, recently told ESPN. “The bat will play more like that of a wood bat and make the game more realistic and bring more truth to the game.”

Big changes occurred at the collegiate level when the new bats were introduced last year. Team batting averages dropped from .305 to .282, team ERA was reduced from 5.97 to 4.07 and home runs were cut almost in half from 0.93 per game to 0.51 per game.

We spoke to some of the county’s top hitters from last season as well as some veteran coaches, and the consensus is that batters are going to have to be smarter at the plate, home runs will be less plentiful and runs will be harder to come by.

“The new bats are similar to wood bats,” Flanagan coach Ray Evans said. “The sweet spot is much smaller than the old aluminum bats that have been used in the past. Players have to know how to hit and stay inside the ball better. The ball will still travel if hit well though.”

“We have already started using them in the fall, although we have always hit with wood bats throughout the fall anyway,” Evans added. “It would not make sense to wait until spring to suddenly throw these bats at the players then. They would have a false sense of what they are able to do with their swing because of using the old bats, which are more forgiving.”

Flanagan’s Andres Sanchez, a BrowardHighSchoolBaseball.com First Team All-County selection last season, may not have the Broward County-record 17 home runs he did last year. His average of .500 also likely will drop as he plays his senior season, but he’s already embraced the new bats.

“I don’t hate them,” Sanchez said. “I feel comfortable with them.”

He says he already knows what he and hitters like him will need to do to be productive this spring.

“Powerful hitters will have to adjust to the small ball rather than trying to score runs on big hits,” Sanchez said.

Like Sanchez, Coral Springs’ Alan Sharkey said “I like them, but some kids say they’re going to struggle.”

Sanchez and Sharkey, also a First Team All-County pick who holds the school’s career hits record with 106 and batted .507 last year, agree cheap or soft hits will be harder to come by.

“There’s not going to be those dinkers,” said Sharkey, a senior this year.

Sharkey’s teammate, senior Lewis Brinson, a fellow All-County First Team selection and the 2011 BrowardHighSchoolBaseball.com District 10-6A Player of the Year, said the new bats “are not as powerful as the old ones. There’s going to be less home runs for sure, maybe more triples and doubles. There’s still going to be some balls in the gap and some that get through.”

Archbishop McCarthy coach Rich Bielski said “hitters are going to have to improve on others parts of the game” and things such as sacrifice bunting and bunting for hits are going to have to come into play more.

The new bats are going to cause “a major difference at the high school level” and “teams that have speed are going to benefit.”

Although the Mavericks had several solid pitchers last year, they thrived on offense and routed several teams, but the bat switch comes at a time when Bielski’s team is going through changes of its own.

“We lost some powerful hitters and were going to have a different team anyway,” said Bielski, whose team was named national champions by “Baseball America” after winning the Class 4A state title for the second year in a row. “The past two years, we’ve been blessed with powerful hitters who hit a lot of home runs.”

Bielski and Evans are among coaches who agree the new bats mean fewer runs overall.

“The games will definitely be lower scoring now, which means they will be faster moving,” Evans said.

Coral Springs assistant coach Michael Cimilluca said a hitter’s mindset is going to be affected more with the new bats, which will “be more in the hitters’ minds.”

“Just having the mental attitude that the ball isn’t go to go that far even if I hit it hard,” he said. “[The new bats will] put an emphasis on line-drive hitting and pitching and defense.”

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