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2011 NCAA Baseball Bat Standards

Starting this season, a new bat testing standard will be in place for NCAA baseball across all three Divisions. The goal is for non-wood bats that meet this new standard to perform similarly to wood bats in competition.

NCAA baseball has a vast variety of teams and styles of play and a central part of the bat standards is to ensure a balance between offense and defense.

Known as the Ball-Bat Coefficient of Restitution (BBCOR), all bats used in NCAA competition for all divisions must meet this standard and display the appropriate certification mark. There is no opportunity for “grandfathering” old bats.

The 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. NCAA bat performance testing protocols are developed and managed by the Baseball Research Panel, which consists of a group of top scientists and researchers from NCAA institutions.

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 continue to indicate increasing offensive performance, particularly in home runs and runs scored, and the rules committee believes this is due in large part to bat performance. Part of the rules committee’s charge is to ensure a balance between offense and defense.

All BBCOR bats incorporate a logo. This mark is consistent across every approved bat design so umpires will easily identify approved bats.