Practice bat?

When my kids were that age they did have wood bats for cage use, but pretty much only used them in the off-season. When games are on I think it's better to be practicing with your game bat, or at least a bat that is similar, like maybe a cheaper metal bat of the same weight.

 

As for "keeping it fresh", I've seen it done, but you really have to hit a heck of a lot of balls to wear out a composite bat. In fact, they loosen up and can have more pop if you do wear them out a bit.  Since kids that age typically need a new bat every year due to growth, I would not worry about that unless the kid's a real beast.

Composite bats nowadays, dont break as often as they did when my son was 10-12.  Those bats were stupid hot but fragile as well.  They have toned them down a little while increasing their durability.  Training with wood bats will make your son a better hitter in the long run.  The problem with his age group is getting a decent bat that is weight appropriate and isnt too fragile.  We didnt have too much luck with chain store ash bats. We used youth model maples or birch and they were much better.  If he is a big kid you may want to use this as his last year in a -11.  The Anderson Techzilla is a -9 metal bat with a smaller sweet spot and an end load.  When you square a pitch up with the old version of this bat the ball was flying somewhere.  surface dimples a lil but this bat will take a beating.  Remember you will start transitioning to a drop 3. Hopefully, by the time he is 14 he will be comfortable with a drop 3.  When jumping up every year, dont let your kid's bat head drop early and "get long" with his swing. I think the main thing with a big strong kid is to avoid the wiffle ball bat swing.  Glad you are bringing wood bats into the picture, have fun and save your money, the bat budget is not a cheap one.

JMO, but I held off on getting my son a wood bat until he swung a drop 5 for a season.  He is transitioning to BBCOR, so now a wood bat makes sense.  He likes it in the cage.  Cool factor, I guess.  Smaller sweet spot is good for working the swing in a cage.

As I have said many times everybody should swing wood at all age levels.  We did in my day.  Keep pitchers a lot safer.  Have at that practice with wood!  Just a thought though if it is truly only for practice get a bamboo practice bat.  No pop but extremely durable.

Plus that. Bamboo bats are excellent cage bats.  Cheap and last forever.

At around 10, my son started swinging wood all winter. I always had the bat made a couple of ounces heavier then what he was swinging when the fall ended. In other words, that length/weight that he would swing in the winter is the bat he would start off with in the spring. Make sure that he's able to swing a -5 by 12, at the latest.

I'm not one to name companies, but B45 makes a reasonable birch bat that you can have made into the length/weight that you prefer. Up to -12 I believe.

https://www.b45online.com/

My kid used a Sam Bat (LL version) at that age.  It helps build up strength.  I would not use wood in the cages.  Only for tee work and soft toss. 

Just my opinion Dadof3 but I wouldn't let him use the drop 6 until you are done with fall tourneys.  My reasoning is a kids swing CAN change with a heavier bat.  Swinging an extra 5 ounces when you are 10 could take some adjusting and if he does adjust to swinging the heavier bat, meaning a different speed and possibly a different bat path through the zone, and then flips back next weekend to his drop 11...well it COULD mess him up going back and forth like that.

 

I'm all for heavier bats in the winter shutdown period, but I'm not fond of switching back and forth between two totally different types of bats during tourney time, but that's just me, I have nothing to back it up.

Use the game bat for practice.  He's at an age that he will outgrow his bat by next year or before it's worn out anyway.  No need to throw off his timing, mechanics, or his mental state, by using any other bat than his game bat.  Build confidence and learn the strike zone.  Be prepared to buy many bats.

be prepared to buy many bats seems to be a reoccurring theme.

I know in Georgia an 11-year-old can swing pretty much anything they want as can a 12-year-old. A 13-year-old some tournaments require a drop five. When you get to 14 it is drop 3 BBCOR for pretty much everything.  Then factor in wooden bat tourneys and you have to have at least two bats.....then of course there is the baseball superstition of so and so's bat  works better than mine,  and let's not forget my favorite "my kid just grew an inch a month for the last six months" year… Yeah that 29, that doesn't really work anymore.

So yes, many many many many bats need to be purchased.  My son was always the early bloomer so we would sell his bats every year to the smaller kids on the team,  that might help you recoup some of the costs, for now.

Golfman, Can you please elaborate why not to use wood in cages? Just curious, I want to start kid with wood.

Agreed, why not use wood in the cages?

Originally Posted by sunwalkingvalley:

…Training with wood bats will make your son a better hitter in the long run. …

 

How exactly does that happen?

Wood breaks, especially with less than perfect hitters.  

This should read as can make your son a better hitter in the long run, some kids never become good hitters, regardless of the bat they use. Kids need to learn to bring the sweet spot to the ball.  When using wood, you will need to bring the sweet spot to the ball to get any distance or power on the hit and to keep from breaking the bat. So by using wood, you will learn bat control, and can, in the long run, become a better hitter. Lots of kids struggle moving to -3 wood bats, not necessarily due to the weight, but due to poor swing mechanics.  A heavier bat will show poor swing mechanics quickly.

If you want to build power, use a heavy bat.  If you want to build speed, use a lighter bat.  If you want to get your timing down, use your game bat.  All three should be used in conjunction with someone who knows how to train your swing.  The last thing any kid needs is to go into a game after working with a bat at practice that does not mirror his game bat size, weight, and balance. Train heavy, train light, and finish with timing.  Don't forget to learn the strike zone, regardless of the bat you choose.

Originally Posted by 2forU:

This should read as can make your son a better hitter in the long run, some kids never become good hitters, regardless of the bat they use. Kids need to learn to bring the sweet spot to the ball.  When using wood, you will need to bring the sweet spot to the ball to get any distance or power on the hit and to keep from breaking the bat. So by using wood, you will learn bat control, and can, in the long run, become a better hitter. Lots of kids struggle moving to -3 wood bats, not necessarily due to the weight, but due to poor swing mechanics.  A heavier bat will show poor swing mechanics quickly.

 

With just a little bit of looking I found a few hitting aids.

 

http://www.hittingworld.com/Ba...itting_Aids_s/85.htm

 

This is the one I thought should be the epitome of hitting training aids, especially when Ken Griffey Jr was endorsing it.

 

http://www.amazon.com/gp/produ...0X66BQ8R04M89HBXMQ8K

 

And it even came with videos!

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lM0KoI-zgIg

 

But in the end, here’s what swingsmarter.com thinks about it and a couple other swing trainers.

 

http://www.swing-smarter-baseb...g-training-aids.html

 

And here’s what they feel are the 9 best.

 

http://www.swing-smarter-baseb...om/hitting-aids.html

 

With all the help available out there, it makes one wonder why every hitter in the world doesn’t make Ted Williams look like Ted E. Bear.

I don't consider myself an expert in this area, but I found this and this is what I have been lead to believe when it comes to woodbats.  Just using the bat will not make you better but learning to swing a woodbat correctly will.  That said it can be done with a non-wood bat as well, but your not going to get the "feedback" you do from a woodbat...

 

The smaller sweet spot forces the hitter to develop a swing that brings the barrel into contact with the ball. Hitting this smaller target hones the swing better than swinging a bat with a very large sweet spot. 

 

The vibration caused by miss-hits using a wood bat will sting sometimes. That is a clear indicator that the swing was less than ideal. 

 

Wood bats are heavier in the barrel, making them more difficult to swing. A 30 ounce metal bat is easier to swing than a 30 oz. wood bat, in part, because of weight distribution. Metal can put more of the overall weight in the handle whereas wood will carry the weight in its thickest part, the barrel. The further the weight is from your hands, the heavier it feels. 

Originally Posted by joes87:

I don't consider myself an expert in this area, but I found this and this is what I have been lead to believe when it comes to woodbats.  Just using the bat will not make you better but learning to swing a woodbat correctly will.  That said it can be done with a non-wood bat as well, but your not going to get the "feedback" you do from a woodbat...

 

Stopping there, what you’ve said made great sense, and most importantly without resorting to hyperbole. I do think non-wood bats give a lot of feedback too, but as to whether the feedback from wood is easier for hitters to interpret than non-wood is a different discussion.

 

The smaller sweet spot forces the hitter to develop a swing that brings the barrel into contact with the ball. Hitting this smaller target hones the swing better than swinging a bat with a very large sweet spot. 

 

How much smaller is the sweet spot of a wood bat than a BBCOR bat and how much different than a BPF bat?

 

The vibration caused by miss-hits using a wood bat will sting sometimes. That is a clear indicator that the swing was less than ideal. 

 

Doesn’t that happen with a non-wood bat as well?

 

Wood bats are heavier in the barrel, making them more difficult to swing. A 30 ounce metal bat is easier to swing than a 30 oz. wood bat, in part, because of weight distribution. Metal can put more of the overall weight in the handle whereas wood will carry the weight in its thickest part, the barrel. The further the weight is from your hands, the heavier it feels. 

 

Agreed, which is why I’ll never understand why so few players have learned how to make bat adjustments to non-wood the same way we made them to wood 50 years ago.

How much smaller is the sweet spot of a wood bat than a BBCOR bat and how much different than a BPF bat?

Actually good question that I don't have an answer for.  I would guess it varies from bat to bat and that some BBCORs may in fact be very similar to wood.  While others may not be.  I can tell you that I see a lot of difference between the way my kids travel team hits when they are playing wood bat vs. the way they hit when using BBCOR bats.  There seems to be a higher (say by 40%?? - don't have actual stats) percentage of "quality" hits when using non-wood.

 

The vibration caused by miss-hits using a wood bat will sting sometimes. That is a clear indicator that the swing was less than ideal. 

Yes vibration by both but my son (I haven't hit in a long time) says he feels it more in the wood bat.  Again this probably varies from bat to bat but I think the two piece setup of today's bats takes away some of the vibration.

 

Again, I am not a hitting expert.  We switched to a program this year that hits with wood while he HS team uses non-wood.  I saw a marked improvement in quality of his hits when using non-wood in the HS games vs. using wood with the travel.  Can I prove that its due to the use of wood and not growth or the off season work, no.  But I have my suspicions that its one factor.

Just to point out to the OP....joe and stats are talking about high schoolers going back and forth from game bats to wood bats....I take this to mean drop 3 bats and therefore this is a completely different scenario that you brought up about the drop 11 and drop 6 bats for your 11u kid.

good point.  we sidetracked the discussion....

 

Originally Posted by joes87:

Actually good question that I don't have an answer for.  I would guess it varies from bat to bat and that some BBCORs may in fact be very similar to wood.  While others may not be.  I can tell you that I see a lot of difference between the way my kids travel team hits when they are playing wood bat vs. the way they hit when using BBCOR bats.  There seems to be a higher (say by 40%?? - don't have actual stats) percentage of "quality" hits when using non-wood.

 

To tell the truth, I was hoping you might have some kind of real answer I hadn’t seen before, but at least you’re honest about it and allow for the fact that it’s very likely not something set in stone and varies from bat to bat.

 

There are hundreds of papers out there about it, but here’s one authored by Alan Nathan who has been in on this thing from the very beginning and is considered an expert.

 

http://baseball.physics.illino...TAnnual2015-Bats.pdf

 

Be sure to read the section labeled “The NCAA Bat Performance Protocol” at the end of the paper.

 

…I saw a marked improvement in quality of his hits when using non-wood in the HS games vs. using wood with the travel.  Can I prove that its due to the use of wood and not growth or the off season work, no.  But I have my suspicions that its one factor.

 

Here’s where I question how much of a factor it is. ASSUMING he’s a “normal” kid with “normal” growth patterns, how much of his “improvement” is directly related to that rather than practicing with wood? Of course it’s impossible to tell because it’s impossible to have a control group for him. About the only way it could be done with any degree of reliability, would be to have a few thousand players agree to never use wood, and an equal number of players with very similar abilities agree to only practice with wood, then check their performance after the experiment. But I don’t see that happening any time soon.

 

But it doesn’t really bother me as an important question. It bothers me as something that could just as easily be a waste of time as a great training method, and without any real proof one way or the other, it becomes just more baseball mythology that prolly hurts no one.

If your kid is interested in using wood for a practice bat I would not discourage it as it shows "self-motivation" to improve his skills, whether imaginary or real. Plus he will learn a little bit about what it takes to hit in the professional leagues.

 

If nothing else its fun to watch a kid try to extend the life of a damaged wood bat and get into the differences between various types of wood, handles,  etc.  It makes for interesting discussions you'd never have with a metal bat. 

 

btw working with wood will change many batters swings so as to not break the bats or hurt their hands by hitting it off the handle etc...

 

My daughter hit with a composite wooden bat all of her life.  I've posted video before of her hitting with it.  We added weight to the end with athletic tape.  She hit all the way through college with a taped wooden bat.  She eventually wore her first bat out and so, we got her a new one her sophomore year of college.  It is sitting in her bat bag right now. 

I was a dealer for bamboo bats and have quite a few brand new LL models left. I would like to get rid of them for a at a decent price plus the ride.
28"-30" they are approx -8
2016southpaw is swinging 33/30 so no need for the others.

Practice bat? Game Bat?  Just make sure the kid can hit with it 

 

I was talking to a parent a couple years back and he was bragging how he paid 200 plus dollars for a bat for his son. I nodded and said nothing. Now in my mind he would have been better off using the 200 dollars elsewhere. The reality had not hit him yet.