John MacDougall posted:
Sorry, I thought it was sort of implicit. A goal in hitting is to hit the ball on the sweet spot on the bat. You get way more bang for your buck in doing so. The ball comes off a lot harder and harder is better. Becoming a better hitter is learning how to adjust your swing as the ball comes in to try and make contact as close to the SS as possible. Just like a tennis player "knows" how to swing so contact is made in the center of his racquet. The vibrational feedback, along with vision, is what helps a player to know whether he accomplished this or not.
So your answer is, the player learns to somehow during the swing, adjust it so it hits the ball closer to the sweet spot?
The part about non wood bats is in the other answer. The BBCOR non wood bats aren't as bad as the old "steroid" bats (still in use in youth leagues) The trampoline effect pretty much guaranteed they would not develop a feel for the sweet spot. I've seen some really terrible swings with those bats that produce a ball that has no business going as far as it does!
So your answer is, BBCOR bats are better than non-wood non-BBCOR bats for learning to hit on the sweet spot, but still not as good as wood for doing that? If that’s what your answer is, expressed in a percentage, how much better would you say wood is? 50% better? 20% better?
Also, for the player still using non-wood in games, how does the new “skill” translate to the non-wood bat when the MOI is likely very different making the swing different as well?