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Technology ArticleThe Great Baseball Bat debate Which wood is best for a baseball bat, Maple or Ash? That is the raging debate in Major League Baseball! Maple is extremely hard, dense wood. The surface hardness is about twenty percent greater than ash. The harder the surface the faster the ball will jump off the bat. This is one of the reasons maple has become so popular; that and the fact that Barry Bonds swings maple. Maple is a closer grained hard wood than ash. The grain is not as easy to see as it is with ash. The straightness of the grain does not matter as it does with ash. Maple will not splinter. The grain will not separate. The hardness of maple makes a bat with less flex. Ash on the other hand flexes. When a ball is hit with an ash bat there is a trampoline affect. The ball doesn't just jump off; it first compresses the wood, then like a spring board it leaves with much more force than maple. This spring board affect is one of ash's greatest strengths and weaknesses. The spring board and compression traits of an ash bat will in time cause the grains to separate over time. The flex of an ash bat will appear to have a larger sweet spot. Ash bats do not snap the way a maple bat does. Ash bats will break just as easy, but usually they just wear out. The grain of an ash bat will delaminate over many uses. So, which is better? Did Bonds really have a better home run tool with maple? Yale physics professor Robert Adair says no. He served on a committee commissioned by MLB three years ago and led by University of Massachusetts-Lowell engineer James Sherwood. The conclusion was maple bats were almost identical to ash in ball-striking characteristics. But if maple is so much harder, how can so many barrels be breaking off and flying into the infield? Bats use to be tapered and have a gradual thinning from barrel to handle. Now you see bats with the ultra-thin handles and big barrels, which means the bats can snap because they are out of proportion. Players want that bat whip with the thin handle. Now even the strongest players, such as Jeff Bagwell, use 34-ounce bats. The lighter bats and thinner handles might be why you are seeing more bats exploding. Ash will flex at the handle, maple will not. That's why maple breaks cleanly. There are no grains on the bat. It's one composite, basically. The ash has grains. The maple vs. ash debate could get more complicated with the next evolution: beech, a hybrid between maple and ash that is imported from Europe. Wikipedia Disclaimer Above information is from wikipedia and is freely distributed under the GNU license Also See: All Articles |