Long ball could decide champ
If the College World Series is like the first two rounds of the NCAA baseball tournament, fans in the outfield seats at Charles Schwab Field are going to take home lots of souvenir balls.
The 424 home runs hit in regionals and super regionals already are a tournament record, and at least 14 games remain to be played in the CWS.
The eight-team event opens Friday with No. 5 national seed Texas A&M (42-18) playing Oklahoma and No. 9 Texas (47-20) meeting Notre Dame (4015). Saturday openers match No. 2 Stanford (47-16) against Arkansas (43-19) and Mississippi (37-22) against No. 14 Auburn (4220).
Omaha’s cavernous ballpark hasn’t surrendered many homers since it opened in 2011. There were 28 in last year’s CWS, the most since the move from the old Rosenblatt Stadium.
Based on what’s happened across college baseball through super regionals, that number is in jeopardy even though the wind is forecast to blow in most of the CWS.
Texas, Stanford and Arkansas each enter the CWS with at least 100 home runs and Mississippi has 99. A total of 19 Division I teams hit at least 100 this season compared with three last year.
Batting down speculation the ball is juiced this year, American Baseball Coaches Association executive director Craig Keilitz said specifications haven’t changed since the flat-seam ball was introduced in 2015.
Coaches and officials point to a confluence of factors contributing to the surge.
Players are older and more developed at the plate because the NCAA offered an extra season of eligibility to athletes whose 2020 seasons were impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic.
Also, fewer juniors have left to play professionally the past two years because the Major League Baseball draft was reduced to five rounds in 2020 and now is at 20, half as many as there were from 2012-19.
“I guess the philosophy on that is it takes a little bit more time for hitters to mature,” Keilitz said. “I think the swing plane has been a big difference. But the metrics are able to break down the pitching weaknesses. … If you watch the games, home runs hit off a guy throwing 95 to 100 miles an hour is absolutely amazing. But they’re on it, and when they hit it, it seems to go a long ways.”
The first two rounds of the tournament produced some eye-popping homer totals. Stanford hit eight in the opener of its super regional with Connecticut — and lost. In regionals, Arkansas had a seven-homer game against Oklahoma State and Auburn hit seven against Southeastern Louisiana.
Texas comes in with a program-record 128 homers — 47 more than the previous mark — and has the national home run leader in Ivan Melendez, whose 32 homers are most in Division I since 2003.
Melendez is among six CWS players in Omaha with at least 20 homers. Last year, there were none.
Of the eight CWS teams, Oklahoma is the one that most resembles college teams of yesteryear. The Sooners have put down 32 sac bunts and stolen 142 bases, most among CWS teams, and have hit just 70 homers.