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Posted
3 minutes ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Also to give the wooden bat some flex for more pop, I think. 

I also think corking is more about this (bat compression, trampoline effect) than weight reduction.

My point of reference is ridiculous youth baseball world, but some hitters swing better with end loaded, and others with balanced barrel. Moving center of gravity lower can help initial acceleration, and the wider sweet spot for those hitters ensures more likely hitting the baseball's center of mass at a lower point on the barrel. Traditional end loaded design is advantageous for hitters that have no problem whipping the barrel around and creating more angular momentum towards the end of the bat (higher mass and velocity, more boom).

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Posted
21 minutes ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

well physics/engineering = magic for some. 

 

 

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the entire purpose of corking a bat to make it lighter, thus easier to swing, thus increasing swing speed? The trade off with corking is the lighter the bat, the less speed the ball has after impact. Sounds like these bats give the advantage of increasing swing speed without the loss of actual mass. 

All true, with the caveat that the tradeoff with the loss of mass in corking is more than overcome by the gain in velocity.  K = 1/2 mv^2.  Change in velocity has a greater relative impact on total kinetic energy than a change in mass. 

That's why Bonds swung such a light bat. 

Posted
1 minute ago, Guadaloopy said:

All true, with the caveat that the tradeoff with the loss of mass in corking is more than overcome by the gain in velocity.  K = 1/2 mv^2.  Change in velocity has a greater relative impact on total kinetic energy than a change in mass. 

That's why Bonds swung such a light bat. 

 

Yeah but....

The corking makes the bat softer, so some of that K is lost due to the higher elasticity of the corked bat. 

 

But you are correct, which is what I was trying to say earlier in the thread when @jimmyjazz corrected (?) me. 

 

 

 

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Posted
9 hours ago, Victor Lazlo said:

nobody figured this out over the last 125 years, until now.

Except somebody did - someone posted it three posts above yours. Which makes it even more interesting imo that it was kind of discovered but no one did anything similar for 70 years. 

12 hours ago, NBHorn7 said:

What about Hall of Famer Nellie Fox and his "bottle bat" he made famous.

Sold at Auction: 1961 Topps Nellie Fox #477 HOF

His bat wasn't for power though. In his last few seasons in MLB, he helped Joe Morgan become a power hitter.

Since little Nellie Fox thrived on singles and doubles, he couldn’t care less about whip action. He wanted to extend his bat’s “sweet spot” from the barrel as far down as possible, even to his knuckles if necessary, so if a pitcher fooled him with a slider or curve, or jammed him with a fastball, the part of the bat striking the ball was still thick enough to propel the ball through the infield for a hit.

 

1959 season

[edit]

Fox's best season came in 1959, when he received the AL Most Valuable Player award (not until Dustin Pedroia in 2008 would another American League second baseman receive such an honor) on a White Sox team that won its first AL pennant in 40 years. He batted .306, had an on-base percentage of .380, and led the AL in singles. He also started and had four hits in two All-Star games and won his second Gold Glove. The Al López-managed White Sox had the best record in baseball, going 94-60 to finish five games ahead of the Cleveland Indians and a surprising 15 ahead of the New York Yankees. It was one of just two seasons the Yankees did not win the pennant between 19491964.

In the World Series, Fox batted a team-high .375 with three doubles, but the Sox lost to the Los Angeles Dodgers in six games. In Game 5, Fox scored the only run when Sherm Lollar hit into a double play in the fourth inning (this was only the second time that a World Series game did not have an RBI). It was Fox's only postseason experience, and the White Sox did not make it back to the World Series until they swept the 2005 World Series from the Houston Astros.

Later career

[edit]

Fox played his final two seasons (1964–65) with the Houston Colt .45s and Astros. Joe Morgan later said that he looked up to Fox's example as a rookie with the Astros; Fox and Morgan were both diminutive second basemen. Morgan grew up hitting with a Nellie Fox model bat, which had a large barrel and large handle. With the Astros, Fox convinced Morgan to switch to a bat with a thin handle to leverage his power.[7]

 

Posted
28 minutes ago, Dnaguy said:

The conspicuous lack of dick jokes when so much talk about bat shapes, mass, and length means y’all have gotten soft.

Not 100% surly.

Sad Abc GIF by Bachelor in Paradise

So for torpedo bats, the mass goes middle out.

GIF by Silicon Valley

  • Haha 1
Posted
5 minutes ago, Murfdogg21 said:

@Mez2 and Camwood just hit my email with this:

image.png.1aed709f20a4be26c9fdcd9a4384ffde.png

Lol, Chuy has 2 of the trainers. One Victus brand, and the other a Camwood. 

Torpedo Bats, coming to a youth park near you!

Posted
8 hours ago, Pato del Muerto said:

Could the same not be accomplished by choking up?  That moves the barrel closer to the hands, and makes it easier to rotate.    It just makes the bat reach two inches shorter, making swing and misses a little more likely. 

Or just get a shorter bat.  I'm skeptical this is going to make much difference.

Posted
11 hours ago, TxTower said:

They should raise the mound for pitchers to even things out.

Not a bad idea!

Except when all the other MLB teams have these new bats, the national sports media will snap-to and immediately label all non-yankees players with these new bats as "cheaters".

It's only allowed for the yankees to have these new bats.  Lulz.

If pitching stats go to hell in a handbasket, I wonder if these new bats won't be banned eventually, anyway.

I still laugh that in the NPB (Japan league), you can hit .200 and keep your job, be a "star", and make over a million dollars (dollars, not yen) easily.

 

Posted
50 minutes ago, BachelorTrek said:

Not a bad idea!

Except when all the other MLB teams have these new bats, the national sports media will snap-to and immediately label all non-yankees players with these new bats as "cheaters".

It's only allowed for the yankees to have these new bats.  Lulz.

If pitching stats go to hell in a handbasket, I wonder if these new bats won't be banned eventually, anyway.

I still laugh that in the NPB (Japan league), you can hit .200 and keep your job, be a "star", and make over a million dollars (dollars, not yen) easily.

 

Yankees aren't the only ones using them currently.

Posted

Results may increase some with bad pitching and/or guys really seeing the ball well.

In the Yankees opening day case, probably both.

Meanwhile Eovaldi shuts down Ely one day after he mashes.

Be interested to see where to track players using them over the course of several weeks/months to get a real picture of it.

Posted
1 hour ago, BachelorTrek said:

Not a bad idea!

Except when all the other MLB teams have these new bats, the national sports media will snap-to and immediately label all non-yankees players with these new bats as "cheaters".

It's only allowed for the yankees to have these new bats.  Lulz.

If pitching stats go to hell in a handbasket, I wonder if these new bats won't be banned eventually, anyway.

I still laugh that in the NPB (Japan league), you can hit .200 and keep your job, be a "star", and make over a million dollars (dollars, not yen) easily.

 

The majority of teams have at least one player using these bats already. Moron.

Posted
On 3/31/2025 at 11:35 PM, jimmyjazz said:

Mass moment of inertia is what you are alluding to, and for equal mass it's lower when that mass is biased inward.  No free lunch.

I think the advantage is mostly related to the ball hitting the heaviest part of the bat.

 

On 3/31/2025 at 11:41 PM, High Plains Drifter said:

 

right.. Krot is dependent on moment of inertia, not mass.

Its been a while. 

8th grade fail. 

 

Austin Powers Nerd GIF

Posted
21 hours ago, AeroHorn said:

Just go with a cricket bat. You will be making 100 runs per inning in no time.

image.thumb.jpeg.3fe0700ea32a36b1caec2b7377bb9645.jpeg

Son in the law played cricket and during one of the first conversations we had with him  when we met him in London was why we made the damn bats round in baseball.

Posted

There was a bat company called Steelie or something, back when I was in the latter years of little league that made bats with oval handles. Not the full axe handle that happened 3 decades later, but the same idea.  Didn’t really catch on. 

Posted

1st law of thermodynamics says that energy is conserved.  Same mass of the bat, same angular momentum, same energy imparted to the ball.  Now faster bat speed or ability to accelerate the bat faster for a weaker hitter may help get the bat on the ball better, and create more contact, but the batter still has to barrel up the ball, and not swing at a pitch two feet outside.

Posted (edited)
On 4/1/2025 at 9:06 AM, Guadaloopy said:

OK… so pitch’em outside.  That’s what makes baseball great.  There is a counter move for pretty much everything.  
 

I personally don’t think it’s as much of an innovation as people are giving it credit for.  Weight distribution and shaping of bats has been an evolution throughout the history of the game.  A few years back axe handle bats were the rage.  
 

That said, if the Yankees really did believe they had gained some competitive advantage by reshaping the bats, it’s pretty fucking stupid to come out and say “this is what we did and this is why we did it.”  They should have just said “the bats comply with MLB rules” and left it at that.  

This is exactly the counter. Pitchers will pitch away where those bats lose considerable power. 

On 4/1/2025 at 10:07 AM, Helobious said:

You might not have gotten it. Everyone else of at least average intelligence understood what was going on after taking one look at the bat. It’s just no one knew it was within the rules until the yankee analytics guy studied the rule book and figured it out. The bat design is actually over a year old and was used last spring training. This is just the first time people used it in real games.

The bat technology is 15-20 years old. 

23 hours ago, WBT said:

Or just get a shorter bat.  I'm skeptical this is going to make much difference.

It’s not. It can for a series with pitchers don’t recognize not to pitch inside, but the cat’s already out of the bag so doubtful that happens further. The league has already adjusted. 

Edited by Rex Kramer
Posted
4 hours ago, CycleTex87 said:

Same mass of the bat

Yes, by design.

 

Quote

same angular momentum

Not necessarily.  Angular momentum is J*omega (essentially J*RPM) where "J" is the mass moment of inertia.  J will be lower for a torpedo bat, all other things being equal.  RPM is up to the batter and whether he has the strength/twitch/desire to swing faster.

These guys are looking for small improvements -- 10% would be huge.  All the details matter.

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Posted (edited)
On 4/1/2025 at 11:32 AM, High Plains Drifter said:

 

well physics/engineering = magic for some. 

 

 

Somebody correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the entire purpose of corking a bat to make it lighter, thus easier to swing, thus increasing swing speed? The trade off with corking is the lighter the bat, the less speed the ball has after impact. Sounds like these bats give the advantage of increasing swing speed without the loss of actual mass. 

Yeah, I think that's accurate.  A corked bat would also have a different coefficient of resititution than a solid wood bat that probably works against it.  That is, more energy/momentum lost to compression of the thin-walled bat.

Edited by TwiceHorn
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Posted
On 4/1/2025 at 4:56 PM, Murfdogg21 said:

And another torpedo youth bat hits the market:

image.thumb.png.55ff04ff9fca82b881a16c54ed90f9a8.png

What's weird about this is no one outside MLB uses wood bats and it is much easier to accomplish similar things with an aluminum bat without the oddball shape.

1 minute ago, High Plains Drifter said:

 

*restitution

(had to resort to google to be sure)

 

 

Something about typing in these windows makes me make typos I wouldn't ordinarily.

Posted (edited)
3 hours ago, jimmyjazz said:

Yes, by design.

 

Not necessarily.  Angular momentum is J*omega (essentially J*RPM) where "J" is the mass moment of inertia.  J will be lower for a torpedo bat, all other things being equal.  RPM is up to the batter and whether he has the strength/twitch/desire to swing faster.

These guys are looking for small improvements -- 10% would be huge.  All the details matter.

Funny thing, I immediately considered whether this could be patented.  It might could.

However, there was a recent interesting case where American Axle patented a less-vibration-prone drive shaft, the design addressing shell and bending mode vibrations.  When they claimed it though, rather than specifying a range of dimensions for the shaft liner, they phrased it in terms of "tuning the liner to damp both shell mode and bending mode vibrations" and then threw in a couple of percentages for how much damping it accomplished.

There was a big snit about whether that was patenting "laws of nature" because it basically claimed a design process of tuning a shaft liner to damp two types of vibration to a satisfactory degree (which could be considered patent-ineligible). Rather, arguably, than the product of such a design process having concrete dimensions or other characteristics (which would be patent-eligible).

This could be susceptible to the same kind of problem, but specifying a range of dimensions should be easier because there's a more finite universe of legal bat lengths and diameters than there is of drive shafts.

Edited by TwiceHorn
Posted

Really good interview on the ticket with the founder of warstic regarding these bats. 

Tl;dr

The design isn't new. It will only help a very few, pitchers will just start working outside on guys using these. 

Worth a listen. And yes, they are making them for some of their MLB guys. 

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