The NCAA has announced that they are placing a moratorium for composite bats according to a report from Baseball America’s Aaron Fitt (LINK). The issue about the composite bats aroused during the Tennessee and Vanderbilt season ending series where multiple homers by the Volunteers were hit over the wall at ridiculous distances. Tim Corbin was adamant that Tennessee was using hot bats to hit those homers including getting a bat confiscated. The SEC Tournament Conference Call which took place after that series focused on the issue.
The way that you would make a bat hot is to “roll the bat” by putting it into a vice like device and put pressure on the bat with rollers making it “used.” The rolling causes the bat to make it act older. (Video available here.) An older composite bat has shown in studies to have better performance over a brand new composite bat. You can check out a detailed report on accelerated bat break in by clicking here.
I was in Omaha for the College World Series and had a suspicion that one of the school’s in the final eight was using “hot bats” but I was never able to confirm anything as many people though that team was not using the type of bats in question. I can still remember a long home run off the end of the bat that should have been a weak flyout to right field but ended up in the second to last row of the right field bleachers.
