New Ball Watch: Week 1 Scoring Increases

A major storyline this season will be the performance of the new lower-seamed baseballs, which were adopted this season in an attempt to boost offense in college baseball. Here’s a quick snapshot of how opening weekend scoring compared with last year, and with 2010—the final year before the current BBCOR bat standards were implemented:

2015 – 11.52 runs per game

2014 – 10.40 runs per game

2010 – 13.82 runs per game

So scoring is up 11 percent from last year’s opening weekend, according to our data, but still down 17 percent from[…]