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Broken Bats

The great debate in baseball this year is whether maple bats should be banned.  Although there have been many close calls, to my knowledge no one has been seriously hurt. I’ll admit that in my 12 seasons in the Major Leagues, I have never seen this many bats not only break, but fly through the air like weapons out of the movie “Braveheart.”

One reason for the increasing number of bat breaks is the greater number of players that use maple. To the best of my knowledge, Maple bats were first introduced in 1996 from the Sam Bat Company. Barry Bonds was the first player that I can recall using a Sam Bat and I think that was in 1998.

I have never studied forestry but I believe maple wood is denser and therefore harder than ash. The grains of ash bats will, through time, flake off losing the integrity of the bat. I’ve had many ash bats start to flake after a few swings during batting practice but have never seen a maple bat flake. My batting practice bats are now made of maple so that I can go the whole year only using one BP bat. Also, because a maple bat is denser it doesn’t have any flex in the handle when you are swinging. If you look at any photos of players when they are in the middle of their swings and you see the bat bending at the handle in a whipping fashion, chances are that it is made of ash.

The sweet spot on a wood baseball bat is about 4 inches and is right around where our name is stamped on it. It is the hardest and densest part of the bat. This is the area where we try to make contact because the ball will travel the fastest and farthest when hit there than any other spot on the bat. Hit a ball there and you barely feel it.

With the velocity that pitchers throw the ball and the movement they are able to put on it, it is very difficult to hit a pitch on the sweet spot on a consistent basis. If you hit a ball too close to the end of the bat or further down toward the handle you will know it as the bat will vibrate and hurt your hands. Too far in either direction and the bat will break. Majority of the time, on a poorly struck ball, an ash bat will develop a hair line crack on the handle part of the bat in which the player can see and discard the bat and use another. If you miss hit the ball really bad it may splinter and sometimes break in half but that is not as often especially with an ash.

My theory on the maple bat breaking in half so often is that when you get jammed or hit a ball off of the end of a maple bat it cracks on the inside because the wood is so dense and stiff. A batter will not see the crack and take the bat up to the plate for another swing.  Making contact on a ball traveling at a high speed with a bat that has even the smallest crack will break the bat and often times shatter it in half. Therefore, I feel that these maple bats that are exploding and flying through the air are because the bat was already broken but the batter did not see any evidence on the outside and took it up to the plate for another swing.

Some bat companies are saying that the reason for so many bats breaking nowadays is because players are ordering bats with much smaller handles and bigger heads to generate more head speed at contact. They are advising that bats in the future be limited to a certain length/weight rule and be made with mandatory thicker handles. I personally don’t think that will make much difference. I’ve seen maple and ash bats with handles as thick as axe handles shatter when batters get jammed just as I’ve had my own bats with thinner handles develop the slightest crack on balls that I hit as far on the end as you can hit a ball.

I believe that many of these bats companies will not admit that the quality of the bats that they are sending out have gone down. There are more bat companies today than there has ever been and the demand is extremely high for wood bats. College players practice with wood bats and participate in summer leagues which require their usage. High school players are now practicing with them and there are a large number of independent leagues and minor leagues as well as the big leagues which wooden bats are mandatory. I believe that with the high demands and more bat companies rushing their product out to the players we are often given bats made of lesser quality. I think that many smaller companies are trying to ship out so many to make their mark that they are not as concerned with taking their time and doing the process correctly. I also feel that some major companies are cutting corners to keep up with the numbers that others are producing. This all leads to lesser quality bats being put in the hands of ballplayers.

MLB is investigating the matter as I’ve seen officials collecting broken bats and trying to look into the cause of the breaks and what step to take next. Many are recommending that MLB take out maple bats all together.

The majority of my teammates use maple and it seems that the majority of big leaguers use maple bats as well. I really don’t care much because I use both maple and ash. I have a different bat size and model in maple than I do ash and I use whichever feels good that day in my hands. I just don’t think it is fair to blame maple as a whole or the weight and models of the bats without before checking the quality of the bats being distributed to ballplayers. 

-DD