Reply to "Start Using Wood Now"

quote:

Technically we are talking about the moment-of-inertia of the bat. MOI is the product of mass and the square of a distance - which while not the same as the center-of-mass (CM) location is strongly influenced by the balance point. The closer the CM is to the handle, the lower the MOI will be. Several studies have shown that swing speed depends strongly on the moment-of-inertia of the bat; a player can swing a lower inertia bat faster. This affects performance because higher bat speed is directly related to higher batted ball speed. The faster a player can swing a bat, the higher the final speed of the ball. Lowering the inertia of the bat too much will result in a lower amount of momentum that the bat carries into the collision, reducing the batted ball speed. Ideally a player should use a bat with a high moment of inertia and swing it really fast - but this is difficult unless you are really strong (which is why many baseball and softball players undergo weight training regimens during the off-season in order to bulk up their strength and increase swing speed). Getting back to the comparison of wood and aluminum bats, an aluminum bat with the same weight as a wood bat will have a significantly lower inertia and can thus be swung faster than the wood bat.