some college baseball news that pinged my attention

The "Ping" of the aluminum bat won't be quite the same this year. To me that is the most obnoxious sound in sports, rivaled only by the stupid "Get in the hole!" yell you always hear during putts on the PGA Tour. I've never heard anyone scream "Get in the basket!!" on a basketball shot. But that's a rant for a different time.

College baseball season has just started. I don't know about other games but NC State has played 3 games so far. I read that the NCAA had switched over to new aluminum bats that behave more like wood. Apparently they cut the sweet spot down to 5% of a traditional aluminum bat. That's comparable to a wooden bat, where the sweet spot is on the heart of the barrel near the trademark. Maximum contact, maximum transfer of the bat force to the ball, maximum drive. On an old aluminum bat the sweet spot is pretty much "the bat".

I read that NC State's baseball coach said he'd already seen differences in their pre-season practices. Balls that would hit the scoreboard significantly over the fence last year were barely making it to the fence, if that, this year.

I've always hated the aluminum bats. Guys didn't have to learn to hit because if you get the bat on the ball you have a chance. It's hard to get jammed. You're certainly not going to hit an inside pitch off the handle and break your bat. The transition to hitting with wood in the pros is hard for some guys.

Pitchers get to actually learn to pitch. You can totally jam a guy in college and give up a home run. In the pros you can break his bat and induce a weakly hit ball.

The new bats are alot less dangerous. I think physics studies found that a ball hit straight back to the mound off a pitch thrown in the mid to upper 90's, which would be the speed of an elite college pitcher who's going to be a major league prospect, returns at the pitcher at about 140 miles per hour. After his pitching motion and stride a pitcher is only about 55-56 feet from the plate. It was determined that at that speed a pitcher couldn't possibly move his glove fast enough to deflect a ball right back at him, if it was hit back as hard as it could be. If that hits in the head you're talking about not just the end of a career but the end of a life.

There have been several scary injuries to pitchers on comebackers in the Majors the last few years. Lucky no permanent injury resulted though I think one guy was rattled enough as a result that he's never quite had the same pitching confidence out there. It could have been worse with aluminum because the balls are hit even harder.