Bat Testing Before Games Will Stop Cheating 0

by • Featured

The NCAA Baseball Rules Committee has recommended that conferences on all levels of NCAA baseball consider expanding bat testing to each game day before the start of contests for the 2024 season.

Collegiate Baseball feels it is a superb plan of action.

According to the NCAA Div. I Baseball Statistics Trends report, there were more home runs hit per game per team (1.14) last season than in the past 54 years going back to 1970. That was the first year such records began being kept.

It interesting to note that 1974 was the first year aluminum bats were introduced into college baseball.

It also is interesting to note that 2023 had the highest scoring average per game per team at 6.75 in the last 13 years and the highest batting average (.280) in the last 12 years.

It is doubtful there has ever been a higher home run average in college baseball history than in 2023 since wooden bats were used before 1974.

There is no question some teams are using illegal, high performance bats in games, according to a number of coaches Collegiate Baseball talked to. With that being said, the vast majority of teams use legal bats and would never use anything else.

The only way to stop cheaters is to more tightly define what bat testing should encompass.

With this not being a rules-change year for the sport, the rules body decided to make this a suggestion and not mandatory.

Under the current rule, teams are required to have bats tested before the first game of a series, the first game of a tournament or before the start of single games or doubleheaders.

Bats that pass the testing procedure have stickers placed on them to indicate to the umpire that they can be used in games. 

While nobody on the NCAA Baseball Rules Committee would say it, it appears that illegal bats may have been used during the 2023 season.

This new directive will all but stop it from taking place.

It is highly likely that bat testing will be done daily at NCAA Div. I, II and III baseball championships, although no official decision has been made.

To read more of this story, purchase the Oct. 1, 2023 edition of Collegiate Baseball by CLICKING HERE.