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Is there really a difference in performance? by
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Is there really a difference in performance? by
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One of the biggest issues with bats today is whether the batted-ball speed is faster off a multi-wall bat compared to a single-wall bat. The current answer is NO from just about everyone you talk to (equipment manufacturers and softball associations). We very rarely accept such answers without doing our own independent evaluations. We decided to investigate this issue and conduct our own bat-ball impact study, comparing multi-wall and single-wall bat performance in our bat lab. Our research indicates that batted-ball speed is definitely faster off of a multi-wall bat than a single-wall bat. What follows is a description of our testing procedures and a summary of the results.
The overall goal of this study was to determine what advantage, if any,
a multi-wall bat provides in terms of batted-ball speed when compared to
a single-wall bat. In other words, given a bat of equivalent weight, does
your batted-ball speed increase (giving you greater distance), stay the
same, or decrease when you use a multi-wall bat.
Experimental Setup
In order to make sure that we had accurate and reproducible results from our testing, we conducted our bat-ball impact study using indoor batting cages where the pitching is as consistent as possible. We used four different calibrated radar guns to measure our results, two on the bat and two on the ball and recorded the average of the two readings. The balls we used were typical 0.47 COR, leather covered polycore balls with a compression value of approximately 500lbs/0.25". Finally, we had a team that consisted of over 10 players ranging in skill level from Major down to class "D". We tested a total of 16 different bats, 8 multi-wall bats, 6 single wall bats and 2 titanium bats. All bats were 28-30oz. in weight. The average swing speed, average batted ball speed and maximum batted-ball speeds are reported below and provide a summary of the data.
We decided to use 3 statistics in order to describe our test results.
1)
Average Bat Speed – how fast a player can swing a particular bat before
impacting a ball. 2) Average Ball speed – how fast, on average,
is the batted-ball speed for a given type of player and 3) The Maximum
Ball Speed – the maximum batted-ball velocity for a given type of player.
The manufacturers of the bats and balls will not be disclosed in this article.
The key point in this study was to determine the fundamental differences,
if any, between single- and multi-wall bats and not to rate a particular
bat.
Test Results
Our test results revealed an interesting pattern as Table 1 will show. To clarify what the results mean, the value of Bat Speed is the average bat speed (based on 5 swings) without impacting a ball. The Average Ball Speed is the average batted-ball speed for all of the players for a particular class of player. The Maximum Ball Speed is the average of the 5 highest recorded batted-ball speeds for a particular class of player. The number in parentheses (##) indicates the net increase in ball velocity. This is the difference between the batted-ball speed and your bat speed and is sometimes referred to as the (delta). The delta ranges anywhere from 4-22 MPH for multi-wall bats and from –3 to 5 MPH for single wall bats. The significance of using the maximum batted ball speed is that given the large amount of data taken, if only the highest values are considered, we can assume that these represent well hit balls right at the bat's sweetspot. This gives us the best indication of a bat's optimum performance and thus the best comparison of single- vs. multi-wall bat performance.
Based on maximum batted ball speed, it is clear that every type of player
benefits from use of a multi-wall bat with a 3-5 MPH advantage in batted
ball speed and a 9-17 MPH delta increase compared to single-wall bats.
This was quite interesting because we have always heard that there was
no difference in the maximum ball speed off a single-wall versus a multi-wall
bat. While more detailed testing may be warranted, these results seem to
be consistent with the trend these days in more home runs and more injuries
since the introduction of multi-wall bats and high-compression softballs.
The titanium bat data was included as a comparison and the differences
between titanium versus conventional single-wall bats is obvious, justifying
why these bats have been banned from the game. However, the disturbing
trend in the data indicates that present day multi-wall bats are essentially
as good (or dangerous, depending on how you feel about the issue) as the
titanium bats.
How to convert batted-ball speed to distance a ball will travel
Figure 1 and Table
2 provide the results of simple calculations comparing the distance
a ball will travel as a function of batted-ball speed (ball velocity) and
initial take-off angle. Based on this data, a ball has to be hit at least
67 MPH and have an initial angle of at least 40 degrees in order to reach
300 feet in distance (a typical home run). Based on our results, just about
every player regardless of level can reach this distance with today’s high-tech
bats and high-compression balls. This is obviously the reason for the increase
in home runs over the past few years.
Conclusions
Multi-wall bats seem to have a performance advantage over single-wall bats that is more than just a larger sweetspot. Players of all skill levels can increase their maximum batted-ball speed by using a multi-wall bat. In fact, current multi-wall bats perform essentially the same as titanium bats, which are banned from the game.
This raises some serious issues in regard to the safety of the game. It is compounded by the fact that our bat-ball impact study indicates that almost all players can swing faster than 60 MPH but the current BPF test only calls for a ball velocity of 60 MPH, which was supposed to represent the average bat speed of the average player. This value needs to be increased to at least 70 MPH. We hope that the safety committees that govern softball will reconsider how the BPF test is run or at least verify that the BPF is not sensitive to ball/bat speed.
As usual, we expect this article to create quite a stir but we think that it is time that serious limitations be placed on both bats and balls in order to get the game of softball back under control.
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