Aug 6, 2010 8:44:20 AM

NCAA institutions sponsoring baseball will be subject to new bat standards this coming season. The new "Ball-Bat Coefficient of Restitution" standard becomes effective January 1, 2011, and there is no opportunity for "grandfathering" old bats.

The new BBCOR formula provides a better measure of a bat's performance and allows the NCAA Baseball Rules Committee and bat-testing laboratories to better predict field performance based on lab tests. The goal is for non-wood bats that meet this new standard to perform similarly to wood bats.

The BBCOR standard, which was announced in September 2008, replaces the Ball Exit Speed Ratio standard. Full information on the BBCOR standard and other bat details is available at the following website: http://www.ncaa.org/baseballbats.

The change was made because:

• For a given bat length, batted-ball speed is a near-perfect correlation with BBCOR so that a bat's BBCOR can be used to predict the speed with which the ball will leave the bat.
• Wood and non-wood bats of similar size and with the same BBCOR produce essentially the same batted-ball speeds, so it is easy to relate a non-wood bat's performance to that of a wood bat.
• Because the BBCOR of a bat does not depend on its length, there is no need for a sliding BBCOR scale.
• A BBCOR standard would not be a burden on manufacturers because coefficient of restitution is a fundamental concept in the physics of bat design, and BBCOR can be adjusted independent of other bat characteristics, such as length, weight, and moment of inertia.
• NCAA Division I baseball statistics indicate increasing offensive performance, particularly in home runs and runs scored, and the rules committee believes this is due in large part to the kind of bats in use today.

In 2007, the per-game average of home runs hit was 0.68. That number increased to .84 in 2008 and .96 in 2009. The per-game average of home runs hit was .94 this spring.

The runs scored per game have also increased steadily since 2007 when it was 6.10 runs per game. In 2008, there were an average of 6.57 runs per contest, and that rose to 6.88 and 6.98, respectively, in 2009 and 2010.

All BBCOR bats will incorporate a logo (shown below) once certification approval is granted. This mark will be consistent across every approved bat design so umpires will easily identify approved bats.

Most manufacturers have indicated plans to have bats available for the fall season. Questions regarding bat standards should be directed to Ty Halpin at the NCAA (thalpin@ncaa.org).