Time to adjust the offense/defense balance in college ball

Seems like every game I watch has three pop fly home runs and while there are a lot of good pitchers out there, it seems none are dominant in conference play, at least score wise. Aside from A few riseballers, I am seeing very little variation in pitching. Just a lot of low in the zone stuff to keep it in the park.

I'd like to see the fences back 15-25 feet to separate the pop fly homers from the true home runs and maybe that will even things out a bit, and let the pitchers use more of the zone.

I wonder if the net effect would be to make pitchers too dominant.

Here are some stats -

2013 SEC (SEC games only, so they can't fatten up on weak opponents) --

297 HR, 7919 at-bats

Compare to MLB this season:

NL - 261/9646
AL - 245/9321

So it's clear that hitters are able to put a lot of balls over the fence even against pretty good pitching. But if you pushed back the fences, that would not only limit cheap home runs, but would give the pitchers more freedom to pitch higher in the zone, so it might curtail hitting in more ways than one.

Not sure what I think here. The HR is a very exciting play, and I don't want the game to be all about pitching. But you're right, there are a lot of pop fly homers, and several line-drive HR that come from less than ideal swings just because of the bats and the size/strength of the hitters. The distance just isn't that far for today's hitters if they get enough of it.

Thanks for the stats, great info. when you take into account that slapping/bunts are a core part of fastpitch offense, I think it even makes that ratio higher for true "swing away" at bats. And I love the HR. the thing that drove opinion was watching a lot of games this past weekend and how homogenous the pitching was. Low-low-low. And then watching the occasional fat miss just sail. It just seemed like anything remotely fat was gone regardless of the quality of contact. I have been watching a lot of Az and Oregon though so my perception may be skewed by the powerful lineups.

For so long, this game was pitcher dominated. 1-0 and 2-1 games were the norm rather than the exception.

2001 ASA Women's Major FP tournament in Phoenix, AZ for example. Several high level college and National Team players participating.

If I remember correctly, there were 8 games scheduled on the first day of the tournament, 5 of the 8 had to go to extra innings and a couple of those went to extra innings at 0-0. One game had to go 17 innings to get a winner.

This was before composite bats and the proliferation of Girls FP that we have today.

In my opinion, the two main factors that have contributed to the increase in offense are the bat technology and the "watering down" of talent across too many teams as players are coming up through youth ball.

Ajaywill said:

In my opinion, the two main factors that have contributed to the increase in offense are the bat technology and the "watering down" of talent across too many teams as players are coming up through youth ball.

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Bats, yes.

Watering down, I don't see that. As with most ''young'' sports, I think the talent and skill level continues to rise rather quickly. Not sure how watering down of talent in youth ball is a factor. The more players playing year-round/tournament ball, the better, IMO.

I tend to think hitters are catching up to pitchers. These dominant pitchers of yore were obviously working pretty hard, doing it year-round. I just think that as the sport gets more popular and more and more players get involved that more and more hitters are going to train year-round, getting coach, etc.

Deaden the balls or deaden the bats. This will make it safer for the corners and pitchers too.

But I think it's ridiculous that 5'2" slapping-sally can have 10 home runs.....

You don't want to deaden bats - because you want the money bat manufacturers do sink into the sport - then 'deaden the ball' is probably the easiest tactic.

Field size increase is difficult - many stadiums just aren't built with enough area behind the fence to add distance easily. I saw a game on TV yesterday where the field was showing 190ft fences which is ridiculous. An alternate way to artificially make the park harder to hit it out of would be to raise fence heights - now that ball sneaking over the fence becomes a rebounding bouncing ball off the fence which is not fun for outfielders in general.

marriard said:

You don't want to deaden bats - because you want the money bat manufacturers do sink into the sport - then 'deaden the ball' is probably the easiest tactic.

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No, it's all about the bats (and balls). Baseball did this recently with BBCORE and the bat manufacturers are doing just fine. Restrict the bats and balls. It's easier (and safer for the players) than retrofitting all the stadiums to have longer fences.

My DD is a riseball pitcher and what I have noticed is with the stronger girls in college what were once fly balls to the OF are now 200-210ft dingers that go almost as high as they go far. Gets to the point where you become reluctant to go upstairs because it is so easy for the ball to leave the park.

riseball said:

My DD is a riseball pitcher and what I have noticed is with the stronger girls in college what were once fly balls to the OF are now 200-210ft dingers that go almost as high as they go far. Gets to the point where you become reluctant to go upstairs because it is so easy for the ball to leave the park.

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But at the same time - I watched an overload of college SB this weekend and I was amazed at the number of "up-ballers" that were pitching versus ONLY ONE down-baller (from Illinois). And ironically the Illinois "down-baller" got hurt by a dropball HR.....