HILLARY SMITH: Time could have let BBCOR solution solve itself

The impact of the BBCOR baseball bat was felt immediately at the college level.

The number of hits decreased, batting averages dropped across the board, home runs became scarcer and pitchers became more potent.

The BBCOR standard -- acronym for Batted Ball Coefficient of Restitution -- adopted last year by the NCAA and this season by the National Federation of High Schools came quickly after a brief NCAA study that determined that a lesser "trampoline" effect off of a metal bat increases safety.

The NCAA then sent bat makers into the workshop to start developing and creating the BBCOR bats in time for last season.

The rush to the market created something that it's possible baseball players weren't prepared for: parity.

Too many bats are so similar that it's tough to pick a favorite.

At a BBCOR show-and-tell last week at Bloom High School, even the players themselves couldn't pick a winner, some favoring the less expensive model while others liked the weight distribution of the more expensive bat. Not that cost should be a determination, but performance overall couldn't be agreed upon.

With the BESR bats -- the former standard of Ball Exit Speed Ratio -- favorites quickly emerged, especially for the players willing to pay the money for them.

"I wish they'd have given it a couple more years at the college level and tweak the bats a little more," Andrean baseball coach Dave Pishkur said. "Let the stats bear out on the impact of the college game. If guys get bigger and stronger and the bats have the same result, that's going to impact us."

If college players last year thought the NCAA rushed to make the switch, not letting manufacturers catch up with more research and development, then the NFHS can be accused of the same thing.

With the NCAA's speed to determine that players needed to be holding a safer bat, the NFHS could have used at least another year or two to see if that was the case. The perfect variable existed with the NCAA already using the bats.

True, there's no saying that if the BESR bats were problematic how many more players could have been hurt in the year or two that the NFHS continued independent research. However, like experimental pharmaceutical drugs that claim to lessen the developments of flu or cancer or any number of diseases, the NFHS didn't wait to see what the side effects were.

By giving bat companies another year or two to improve on the product they released to college students, the NFHS could have allowed for the creation of better bats, let the technology play itself out.

In addition, more time would have allowed high schools with limited funds to raise the money to pay for the new equipment. Keep in mind that there are more of the BESR bats sitting in storage closets now than there were before and if those bats are picked up in batting practice and a player is injured, the school has new problems.

"It might be good for some places, for safety, it's OK, but expense wise, it's not OK," Gavit coach Tony Harris said. "I don't really know that they're that much safer and in college, they just didn't score as many runs anymore. The kids could still get hit by the ball, it's the danger of playing sports."

This column solely represents the writer's opinion. Reach her at hillary.smith@nwi.com.