Changes in Maple Baseball Bats

[Brian Kent]

MLB is announcing changes in maple bats, but is not banning them.

I wondered what the experts here think about ways to make bats explode less. Apparently the problem is that ash bats explode too, but maple bats split into larger, sharper pieces.

They are talking about handle sizes vs. barrel sizes so that the skinny handle is less of a weak spot. There is a formula where length in inches cannot exceed weight in ounces by more than 3.5 (34" bat with a 30.5 ounce weight).

They are also talking about setting wood grain standards. There was no explanation about that, but maybe they mean a straight grain end to end, like you get on a table leg that starts with split wood rather than a cut piece.

Whddyathink?

[Lee Schierer]

As I recall one of the discussion I heard was that old growth lumber with its high density of growth rings per inch was becoming scarce and that bat makers were using newer faster growth material with fewer annual rings per inch. Like the old bundle of twigs, vs a single twig breakage problem, the more annual rings the less likely to fracture. As I recall from my early years, bats were milled from blanks cut from the tree, not from sections split along grain lines. I have an old ash bat at home and as I recall the growth rings are about 1/16" apart, you won't find that in most modern wood bats.

Batters have been trying for years to get the weight out on the end of the bat by making handles skinny. The physics of hitting a ball moving at a high rate of speed with bats moving at high rates of speed puts major stresses on that narrow section of wood.


Maple bats tend to shatter, where ash tends to just split.