"Much, I feel like, truer hops and stuff like that."

The Rays’ first game experience with their new Shaw Sports turf yielded two prevalent opinions: It looked better than what they had previously, and it played differently.

“Extremely different,” second baseman Brandon Lowe said.

Most notably, the new surface, which has coconut husk backfill rather than rubber pellets, plays slower and provides fewer unexpected bounces and more natural grass-like reactions.

Read more at the Tampa Bay Times