High School baseball bat

Check on Mercari and SidelineSwap. Put up an alert for what you are looking for. Most of them are willing to negotiate and you can get some solid deals

That's kind of like saying my kid needs a jacket, does anyone have one for sale....

There a ton of variables that go into selecting a bat.  Height, weight is a good starting point to get into the right length range.  Then, what kind of hitter is he?  Is he a masher, a gap to gap hitter, a kid that needs more bat speed?  If you just hand him a stick that's not right for his size, strength and style of hitting you are handicapping him.

@22and25 posted:

That's kind of like saying my kid needs a jacket, does anyone have one for sale....

 

There a ton of variables that go into selecting a bat.  Height, weight is a good starting point to get into the right length range.  Then, what kind of hitter is he?  Is he a masher, a gap to gap hitter, a kid that needs more bat speed?  If you just hand him a stick that's not right for his size, strength and style of hitting you are handicapping him.

If you do not know much about bats (or BBCOR), I highly recommend spending some time on "Bat Digest" (No affiliation what so ever) also follow their social media. You will get more information on bats then you ever wanted to know. They have recently installed a HitTax system and are posting real data from real hitters. They also sell some of their tested bats on SidelineSwap. 

Hope there are no issues posting about this website. If there are let me know and I will remove. 

When I played in HS we didn't have our own bats.  There was a bat bag and you pulled one out.  I am not that old too - 1985 HS grad.   The technology back then was not as good, no one I knew played year round (but we did play football and basketball) and we most certainly didn't have pitching or hitting coaches outside of on the HS team like kids today. 

I talked to my son about my HS experience and the HR's etc (but had to show him the write-ups in the paper for proof - try newspaper.com you can find some good stuff) and I tell him the facts I just outlined above and he tells me it's much harder now and the pitchers are much better. His point is the pitchers didn't play year round either or have coaches etc.  Maybe he is right.  He claims he could hit 80mph all day long and he speculates that is what we were facing tops..... Maybe he is right but I am sure we faced faster than that.   However,  I am sure I never faced 90 and he did a few times in HS (2019).

@Gunner Mack Jr. posted:

 However,  I am sure I never faced 90 and he did a few times in HS (2019).

This is interesting to me.  I have no idea how often high school baseball players faced 90+ in the 80s and 90s, but I did have a high school friend (in 1983) who had a 90 mph fastball and he had multiple MLB scouts at his games back then.  It was a very big deal.

In three years of high school and summer travel ball, my 2021 son has faced many pitchers  who can throw 90 and is now able to hit them if they give him the chance.  This summer, he saw three 97 mph fastballs in a row during one AB and managed to foul one off before striking out.  I'm sure if he got to see that more often, he'd get better at hitting it, too.

Looked at BBCOR bats this weekend. Torn on getting a 33" or a 34".  Spent the summer hitting a wood 32" Josh Donaldson end loaded bat. Son had warning track power is 6' and a defined 170 lbs.

HitTrax showed him at low to mid 90's on 33" models.  Mid to upper 90's (99.3 mph max) on the 34" models.  Of course the ball isn't moving and I am pretty sure the machine is set up to sell bats.

I was dead set on a 33" until I saw the 5 mph increase in exit speed. Is going from a 32" to a 34" too big a leap? 

@Gunner Mack Jr. posted:

I am not that old too - 1985 HS grad.   

Uh maybe relative to Ty Cobb. You graduated when "floppy disks" was state of the art tech and popular music was still played on 8 track cassettes. 

IMO your son should pick his own bat. Give him a budget and let him figure it out. They usually have swung plenty of their friends' bats, team bats and cage bats etc. and know what they like. 

@2022NYC posted:

Uh maybe relative to Ty Cobb. You graduated when "floppy disks" was state of the art tech and popular music was still played on 8 track cassettes. 

There were sony walkman's then but I did have a record player and a ton of 45's but no bat of my own....I played video games on Intellivision which was state of the art but there was no travel ball   My dad had an apple macintosh in the house but I didn't have a hitting coach.  All our phones were hung from the wall with 20 foot cords where I would call a 900 number to find out the scores of baseball games.  Loved Don Mattingly and Ron Guidry.

@JETSR71 posted:

Looked at BBCOR bats this weekend. Torn on getting a 33" or a 34".  Spent the summer hitting a wood 32" Josh Donaldson end loaded bat. Son had warning track power is 6' and a defined 170 lbs.

HitTrax showed him at low to mid 90's on 33" models.  Mid to upper 90's (99.3 mph max) on the 34" models.  Of course the ball isn't moving and I am pretty sure the machine is set up to sell bats.

I was dead set on a 33" until I saw the 5 mph increase in exit speed. Is going from a 32" to a 34" too big a leap? 

My son is 5’11, 140, and swung a 33 Victus this summer. I was torn on the 32 but figured if the 33 was too much he could grow into it and I would just buy the 32 for now. If I bought the 32 and it was too small I’d be stuck with a bat too small. Long story short, depending on your finances I’d buy the 34 now and see how he handles it. If his swing is long then the 33 would be better. If he’s compact then he should have no problem with a 34. 

@Gunner Mack Jr. posted:

When I played in HS we didn't have our own bats.  There was a bat bag and you pulled one out.  I am not that old too - 1985 HS grad.   The technology back then was not as good, no one I knew played year round (but we did play football and basketball) and we most certainly didn't have pitching or hitting coaches outside of on the HS team like kids today. 

I talked to my son about my HS experience and the HR's etc (but had to show him the write-ups in the paper for proof - try newspaper.com you can find some good stuff) and I tell him the facts I just outlined above and he tells me it's much harder now and the pitchers are much better. His point is the pitchers didn't play year round either or have coaches etc.  Maybe he is right.  He claims he could hit 80mph all day long and he speculates that is what we were facing tops..... Maybe he is right but I am sure we faced faster than that.   However,  I am sure I never faced 90 and he did a few times in HS (2019).

When I played high school and Legion (70’s) we used the bats in the bat bag. The bats were wood. Metal bats were available in college. But they sucked. They weren’t much better than the support poles of a chain link fence. Everyone used team supplied wood. Baseball was for March through August. We played football in the fall and basketball in the winter. There weren’t any off season programs. There weren’t academies. There wasn’t travel ball. 

At Legion states (four finalists) our team had seven potential future D1 pitchers from three high schools. One of the schools was state champion with better pitching on the bench than some other team’s starters. A couple became D1 position players. The other three teams had six more future D1 pitchers. Four eventually signed. One made the majors. He was the best hitter in the state tournament. He never held a bat again. He was a one man wrecking crew who fortunately ran out of innings. 

The only pitcher who hit 90 was a teammate. I faced him in college summer ball. It was then I realized I could hear 93 mph coming. It sizzled. Most of us (D1 pitching prospects) were in the 87 range.

There are companies now offering "bat fitting". 

Basically they let you swing different bats and get measurables with stuff like blast, hittrax etc. and then they have a model to find the right bat for you (length and weight but also stuff like balance, swingweight...).

I have not tried it so not sure how well that works but it is at least interesting.

I think some Dicks locations have a HitTraxx now. 

@2022NYC posted:

Uh maybe relative to Ty Cobb. You graduated when "floppy disks" was state of the art tech and popular music was still played on 8 track cassettes. 

You are obviously a youngster, because no self-respecting boomer would call an 8-track a "cassette". It's a cartridge! 

I get that pitchers are training more now and velo is on the rise but how much of the increased velos is due to technology?  guns that read closer to the pitcher's hand vs closer to the plate?  

@mattys posted:

I get that pitchers are training more now and velo is on the rise but how much of the increased velos is due to technology?  guns that read closer to the pitcher's hand vs closer to the plate?  

I think it's a combination of technology and training, specifically weighted ball training.

Some of these radar guns can be configured to read a little higher. Saw a kid last weekend where the tournament said he was 81-83, but the weekend before he was 76-77. Kid was 77 all summer and in a week he picks up 6mph?

@2022NYC posted:

Uh maybe relative to Ty Cobb. You graduated when "floppy disks" was state of the art tech and popular music was still played on 8 track cassettes. 

And, I think you're mixing your technological eras a bit.

8-track was mostly dead in the late 70s, but floppy disks hung around into the 90s.

A few years ago I found a few 8" floppys and showed my kids.  They were amazed about the size and how flimsy they were.  Wait until I dig out my old 8 track or sony betamax tapes.

I remember buying a computer program back in the 90's and it came with 20 something disks to install. Might have been Mindspring internet software or something.

Going back to the early 80’s a client was very upset with me. After all, I sold the system. He was the stupid person. The training person told him how to take care of floppies. She didn’t think she had to tell anyone not to hole punch them and hang them up with a magnet hook.

8 tracks were early 70’s. Cassettes were mid 70’s. 

@Gunner Mack Jr. posted:

When I played in HS we didn't have our own bats.  There was a bat bag and you pulled one out.  I am not that old too - 1985 HS grad.   The technology back then was not as good, no one I knew played year round (but we did play football and basketball) and we most certainly didn't have pitching or hitting coaches outside of on the HS team like kids today. 

I talked to my son about my HS experience and the HR's etc (but had to show him the write-ups in the paper for proof - try newspaper.com you can find some good stuff) and I tell him the facts I just outlined above and he tells me it's much harder now and the pitchers are much better. His point is the pitchers didn't play year round either or have coaches etc.  Maybe he is right.  He claims he could hit 80mph all day long and he speculates that is what we were facing tops..... Maybe he is right but I am sure we faced faster than that.   However,  I am sure I never faced 90 and he did a few times in HS (2019).

1984 grad here and it was the same. In fact a couple of years earlier we got our first "metal" bat. It was like hitting with a steel pipe. Stung like hell and had no pop.