Should NC HS's go to the exclusive use of wood bats?

At a tournament this past weekend one of my players that stands 6'4" 215lbs hit a pitch that only the pitcher saw coming at him at the last second. The pitcher was 5' 6" and 125 lbs at most. These were 15/16 yr old kids. The pitcher barely got his glove up in front of his face at the last second, the ball hit his glove and ricocheted off his head and took one hop in front of the right fielder stand 250' away. I thought for sure the kid was dead, and asked the umpires to kill the play immediately. Had these kids been using wood, he probably would have still hit the line drive but I don't think it would have gotten on the pitcher as quick as it did. I am all for wood and I hope I never witness a ball being hit back at a picther that hard again.

 

Its the same but its really not at the same time.

When a ball is struck cleanly with wood it comes off just as hard as a metal bat. The deal is it is alot harder to hit it sweet with wood. So over the course of a game or season etc less balls are crushed with wood than metal. With metal bats you get alot of mashed balls in one game. So there are many more opportunities for injuries. The game was designed to be played with wood not metal. The base paths , distance from mound to home etc were all based on the ball coming off wood not metal. Now you have HS kids that are beasts. So the safety factor can not be ignored. Its not as much about kids learning to hit with wood and scouts being able to determine who can hit with wood and who can not. To me its about preserving the integrity of the game and the safety of the players. As far as the quality of the wood and etc they all are fine if you know how to hit. You can put an old black majic aluminum bat in a kids hands and he will rake "if he can hit". You can put and exo grid in another kids hands and he will not rake unless he can hit. I wish all HS would go to wood. But I dont see it happening anytime soon.

 

Coach, You have helped me with a bunch of basebal stuff and I appreciate it. However being a materials person I have to beg to differ that a baseball comes off wood as fast as metal. Science says otherwise. With both bats swung at the same bat speed and both hit exactly on the sweet spot the ball will always come off metal at a faster rate of speed. That's with all things being equal.

Where we do agree is on the slightly off-center hits. The slight mis-hits do come off the metal bats at a fatsre rate of speed. The metal bats are more forgiving. Similar to when PING irons first came out in golf versus traditional cavity back irons. The PINGS were more forgiving.

BTW, thanks for all your comments on showcase ball. I'll PM you later with a couple of questions.

 

Im sure

there have been studies done on ball exit speed wood vs aluminum. Maybe someone can pull them up and post them. Just me but I would be willing to bet there is not alot of difference. Maybe I can look that up today sometime.

 

I think Coach27 is correct

It seems to me that I read what Coach27 is saying. Though what really matters is that the chance of injury decreases with wood, for that reason alone it should be done.

By the way coach27 how'd your summer go? How is the little member of the family doing? PM me back.

 

BESR Certified

Bat Exit Speed Ratio. If you look on a metal bat you will see this stamped on every metal bat that is allowed by NFHS. If it does not have this stamp it can not be used. By the way I do not think you can find one that does not have this stamp. There are numerous articles on the web about test ran by the NCAA and others on metal bat performance vs wood bat performance. The metal bat manufactures are required to produce bats with the same BESR as a wood bat. They are tested and stamped before they can be used by players. The tests show that a metal bat BESR certified and a wood bat produce the same amount of velocity on the ball as it exits the bat. In other words they come off the same. Now what they found out is a wood bat and a metal bat can not be swung with the same amount of bat speed because a metal bat basically has its weight evenly distributed and a wood bat has more weight at the barrell. So the huge difference is a whopping 1-3 mph more exit speed for metal bats. ONE PUTT "Stick to Plastics"

 

One more thing

We I played "us old timers" there were no metal bats. The wood we swung was much different than the wood today. The -3 was not in play like it is today. Metal bats in HS and college have to be -3 bats. In other words the wt must be 3 ounces lighter than the length of the bat. A 34 inch bat would then be a 31 ounce bat. So what you have is 32-29 33-30 and 34-31. These are the size metal bats that HS players use. The kids that wanted to also swing wood were really struggling making the transistion to wood because the wood bats were so much different. Now they picked up a wood bat and the length and wt were so much different than what they were used to swinging. Not to mention the size of the handles. The wood I swung had big thick handles that you had to hold in your hands. We actually take sand paper and work them over so we could get more of the fingers around the handle and whip it better. Now the bat boys got smart. They started producing wood bats that would mimick the metal these boys were used to swinging. Now you can get -3 wood that is very comparable to the feel of a metal bat. The handles are much thinner as well and the weight distribution is much closer to the feel of a metal bat. I can tell you this the longest HR I have ever see my boy hit was hit with wood. I can not tell the difference when he squares up a ball with wood and when he squares one up with metal. The only difference is he squares everything up with metal and if he ever learns to square them all up with wood you probaly will not see me again because I will be sipping cold ones on an island somewhere.

 

A kid works for me that played baseball at Penn State and majored in material engineering. One of his studies was on this very topic. While the difference is not 20-30%, there is a small difference. I promise to stick to materials and listen more on baseball. There is a small difference. I'll speak with my engineers this am. They all played college baseball and are material guys.

 

Let me know

if you got the PM One Putt. It acted kind of funny when I pushed the button.

 

Some technical references

Here are a couple links I had saved when looking at this a couple of years ago. These are from engineering professors who do extensive baseball research, and they include a mix of papers for technical and non-technical readers.

Dr. Daniel Russel, Applied Physics, Kettering University, Flint, MI
http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/bats.html

Dr. Alan Nathan, Physics, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
http://webusers.npl.uiuc.edu/~a-nathan/pob/bats.html
(Has also done some very interesting research on the aerodynamics of pitching - kinda cool.)