Two Tone Maple Bats-2009

[treant985]

Re: Two Tone Maple Bats-2009

Has anyone noticed players holding the bats with the logo's facing the pitcher, instead of facing towards the hitter? Just watching the Cubs/Cards game, it looked like several Cardinals hitters were doing it. Maybe Jeff can confirm. Obviously the idea to rotate the logo 90 degrees won't be very effective since the players will just rotate the bat back 90 degrees, leaving the logo facing left or right, rather than straight up.

[brianborsch]

Re: Two Tone Maple Bats-2009

Without being Nazi's about it, I don't ever see MLB managing this well. To me, it seems unsustainable. Its obviously not consistent since players are not following the rules.

And regarding how a player rotates a bat? Who's going to manage that? What's going to happen if the player doesn't do it? Will you take away the hit? Have they trained the players how to do it properly? To me, its all just BS. Adjusting the slope of the bat so that it is less likely to break, that's more concrete. But this other stuff cannot be maintained.

Just go back to the old style bats where the handles were a lot thicker. You'll get less breaks then.

[Birdbats]

Re: Two Tone Maple Bats-2009

Has anyone noticed players holding the bats with the logo's facing the pitcher, instead of facing towards the hitter? Just watching the Cubs/Cards game, it looked like several Cardinals hitters were doing it. Maybe Jeff can confirm. Obviously the idea to rotate the logo 90 degrees won't be very effective since the players will just rotate the bat back 90 degrees, leaving the logo facing left or right, rather than straight up.

You're absolutely right -- players know the logos have been moved 90 degrees, so they're just holding the bat differently. Or, the same, depending on how you look at it (just the logo placement is different). I know a couple players from years past had center brands rotated 90 degrees. Yogi Berra was pretty famous for doing it. I've seen Tom Nieto bats from the '80s like that. The scientists say the ball will travel just as far with maple if you hit with or against the grain, but that the bat breaks differently. Not sure the players are convinced.

[BMH]

Re: Two Tone Maple Bats-2009

Rock Maple and Sugar Maple are the same thing.

Where the rules came from...that is an interesting story.

http://www.rockbats.com/strength.html

Basically a wood products engineer who worked for the Forestry Service that decided to make bats one day. He also happened to be in the right place at the right time since MLB first went to the Forestry Service for answers. Luckily he's never played baseball and his company only made Pro bats one year...but he had all the answers.

We cannot control how players hit with the bats or if they use bats from a previous season. That is and will be MLB's problem and not ours.

[treant985]

Re: Two Tone Maple Bats-2009

Sounds like ash might be on the way out along with maple: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?...=.jsp&c_id=mlb .

So what's next: yellow birch?