The science of picking out a bat

Picking out the right bat was always an important part of any new baseball season. Sure, there were the old bats from last season, and sometimes sticking with the old and reliable was the best course of action, but more often than not, there would be several new selections to choose from.

There were several factors that went into bat selection. First and foremost was, of course, the coolness factor. If the bat didn’t look cool, it was immediately put towards the bottom of the list. Boring looking bats don’t hit home runs. Sorry boring bats, it’s just a fact.

Once you had narrowed down the bats by design, then other factors came into play. The obvious starting point were the other physical characteristics of the bat, like weight and length. Swinging a bigger bat meant you were cooler, but if you couldn’t swing it, it was way less cool to strike out all the time, so opting for a smaller bat was usually the right choice.

Then, of course, was just how it “felt” to use. How did it feel to swing, how did it feel when you made contact? This part was the most subjective, and while there were some bats that many teammates would swear by, everyone kind of had their own opinion on the matter. Sometimes, if none of the coollooking bats would “feel” right, you had to make your way down to the more boring looking ones and give those an at-bat or two.

Now, how much did the bat really matter in the whole scheme of things? Who knows. As a player, it definitely seemed there were certain bats that just felt better in your hands, that just seemed to make better contact with the ball. And there is certainly some science behind this.

There is a certain portion of the barrel of that bat that is commonly referred to as the “sweet spot” where, because of the weight distribution, you will have the maximum velocity transferred back to the ball as you hit it. This sweet spot’s location on the barrel and size varies from bat to bat based on design.

Because players’ swings also vary, you will see different players getting different performances out of the same bat. Player A’s normal swing path may cause them to more consistently connect with the bat’s sweet spot than Player B’s swing.

Again, the question of “how much does this actually affect anything” comes into play, and that is somewhat less quantifiable, at least with little data to work with. However, at the Major League level, where data is in no short supply and every minute advantage could potentially turn the tide in your favor, the science of bat design is rapidly expanding. You may have seen one of the latest iterations of this early this season with the much lauded ‘torpedo’ style bat, which has the thickest part of the bat closer to the middle of the barrel, rather than on the end. This is to expand the area of ‘sweet spot’ for some hitters, and for those who had their bats customized to their liking, there have been some significant results early. When the Yankees cranked out an impressive amount of home runs against the Brewers with half the lineup using the new bat design, players from around the league flocked to trying to get their own ‘torpedo’ bats. Now, sample sizes are still small and I think that it should be noted that the new design probably won’t work for all batters, given again that different swing styles will produce different preferred contact spots, but this innovation seems to be the start of a new era of further customized bats.

A C ertain Point of

V iew

BY

Nathaniel U nderwood Reporter