TD Ameritrade Park Accents College Hitters’ Flaws — College Baseball, MLB Draft, Prospects

OMAHA—Oklahoma State had just become the first team in College World Series history to win consecutive games by a 1-0 score. But the Cowboys also had scored just two runs in two games, and coach Josh Holliday, while ecstatic to be 2-0, sounded like a man who knew it wouldn’t last.

“No question the at-bats need to improve,” Holliday said. “I think we got away from our approach a little bit. Our quality at-bats need to improve, and execution, getting our bunts down, is part of our identity. It’s how we create offense in certain spots in our lineup . . . We need to work and get fundamentally sound.”

Two losses to Arizona later—which included just 11 hits, four runs and 17 strikeouts—Oklahoma State was headed home from Omaha. Bunting is part of the Cowboys’ approach; fellow Big 12 Conference member Texas Christian plays an opposite style. The Horned Frogs, with freshman Luken Baker hitting two of its three homers, also got off to a 2-0 start, with no bunts (and seven all year).

That’s with associate head coach Bill Mosiello, whose coaching career began under Wally Kincaid at Cerritos (Calif.) JC, running the offense.

“Our philosophy is to develop hitters who will play offense better,” Mosiello said. “We’ve evolved 100 percent away from that approach that we had at Cerritos, where Blair Field had kind of shaped his whole system, out of pure simplicity, where coach Kincaid wanted to win the tournament at Blair.”

Shaping The Sport

Long Beach’s Blair Field helped shape California amateur baseball as the home venue for high school and junior-college tournaments, producing the small-ball West Coast style of offensive play. So is spacious TD Ameritrade Park—in conjunction with the muted metal bats that debuted the same year as TDAP (2011)—shaping college baseball the same way Blair Field did in California?

The conclusion seemed to be no from the college coaches I spoke to, all of whom have coached teams in the CWS, in TDAP. What the park has done, with its wind usually blowing in, vast foul territory and outfield dimensions better suited for the old, potent bats, is put a premium on fundamental play.

“We try to find players who can help us win in any park: the athletic guy, plays multiple positions, multiple sports,” said Kevin MacMullen, the associate head coach for 2015 CWS champion Virginia. “And then we try to pitch and play defense. That plays anywhere. The arms there are really good most of the time. To get there and to win there, you have to both pitch and play defense.”

Coaches agreed that with the old bats and at Rosenblatt Stadium, teams could bash their way past mistakes on defense, or walks by their pitchers. A comeback was one good swing away. The consensus appears to be that there wasn’t a need for a great swing, or even a good offensive approach.

The bats often did the work. Now, the lack of hitting fundamentals across amateur baseball is exposed, writ large year after year at TD Ameritrade. It’s the warriors, not the weapons.

“The hardest thing to find is hitters,” Florida assistant coach Brad Weitzel said. “Hitting is a skill. Developing a skill means repetition. Kids are getting better information about hitting today, but for many of them, they do not do the reps.

“I have a sign in the cage: ‘The hitters that hit the most, hit the most.’ ”

Coaches generally panned the approaches of today’s amateur hitters, from lack of bat control to a lack of concern about striking out. Even for teams that use the bunt, such as UC Irvine, the fundamentals of a good approach are crucial to succeeding in Omaha now.

“It’s way easier to teach them to bunt than it is to teach them to hit,” Anteaters recruiting coordinator Ben Orloff said. “But it’s hard to hit in Omaha; that pitching’s pretty good. When we played Vanderbilt out there (in 2014), we went from Tyler Beede to Walker Buehler, first-rounder to first-rounder.

“So especially in that yard . . . the fundamentals are really, really magnified.”

TDAP isn’t going anywhere, and neither are the college bat standards. The flat-seam balls have helped a little bit. But after decades with an offensive identity, college baseball has gone to the other extreme. It’s still a great sport, but at its pinnacle, college baseball does not put its best foot forward.