Mercer Baseball Featured on NCAA.com

MACON, Ga. – The Mercer baseball team’s offense is one of the top-rated units in the country and was recently recognized in a feature on the front page of NCAA.com on Thursday afternoon.

The article mostly focuses on the Bears staggering offensive production by way of the long ball this season. Mercer is the only one of last year’s Top-10 home run-hitting teams in the country to match its 2010 power production, hitting 65 home runs over its first 43 games of 2011.

This statistic is so shocking due to the change in the bats used in college baseball this season. The new bats have a restricted “Ball-Bat Coefficient of Restitution,” resulting in a slower exit speed for a batted ball, and a metal bat that performs more like a wood bat. The results are staggering, with home runs per game down 50 percent for Division I teams, sliding from nearly one per game last season to less than half a homer per game this year.

The Orange and Black are doing much more than hitting home runs this season, ranking in the Top-30 nationally in multiple offensive categories. Mercer currently ranks tied for first in the nation in home runs (65), second in slugging percentage (.509), third in both runs scored (356) and hits (479) and 24^th in team batting average (.312).

Mercer head coach Craig Gibson credits the Bears success at the dish this season to his teams’ equipment. “I’ll be honest … I think the product we use is pretty good,” Gibson said. “We use a Reebok bat – I don’t work for Reebok, but I think they were ahead of the game when the NCAA went to the BBCOR bat. I think their technology was a little ahead of the other companies.”

To read the entire release, click here.