I Love Links – Fall Baseball Edition

College baseball is changing the seams on the baseball to increase offense. This will allow the ball to travel farther with less wind resistance, but will not increase the speed at which it leaves the bat.

Todd4State’s take:

"I like it. I have a CWS baseball from this year and the seams are WAY up. Especially when you compare it to a MLB or MiLB baseball. Player safety is of course a premium- and so the bats have been deadened. But they did so at the expense of offense. Hitters should have a fair chance to hit a baseball out on a bad pitch just like a pitcher should have a fair chance to get a hitter out on a good pitch. They need to have a happy medium.Was this aimed at [MSU] specifically? No.In fact, I think this will actually help us if you look at what Cohen has been recruiting the past couple of years. We have a LOT more power hitters than before. And that is already becoming evident in fall ball. Garner, Vallot, Ingram, Burdick, Collins, Humphries, Rooker, Cole Gordon, and Swinarski are all guys with very good power potential. I think Cohen kind of expected this to happen and has recruited accordingly. We’ll still be a very aggressive team- maybe even more aggressive in some ways, but we’ll have more power than in the past.Also, the new Adidas bats that MSU uses are probably going to give us an advantage as well. They’re a little bit more live than the Easton bats. In fact, I expect that to be a storyline especially if we hit a significant amount of home runs as a team like Samford did a couple of years ago.It’s nice to have a coaching staff that is proactive and spends their time figuring out how to take advantage of the situation instead of writing a 60 page manifesto on the evils of the NCAA."

Fall baseball is still going on. You can catch scrimmages at the Dude this weekend…

Brandon Woodruff took the hill for the first time since his surgery that ended his 2013 year. He was perfect threw 1.2 innings, throwing in the mid-90s according to Gene Swindoll. Ben Bracewell looked good as well returning from injury.