This kind of bat helps little leaguers hit better, according to WSU researchers

PULLMAN - — Hey, batter batter…swing!

Researchers at Washington State University (WSU) are stepping up to the plate in a new study.

They believe they know which kind of bast is most forgiving for young players: metal ones.

In a recent study, researchers had 52 players, with an average age of 12, take swings with wood bats and then metal bats.

The players, bats, and balls all had motion sensors attached to measure the speed of the swing as well as the balls’ exit speed.

According to their findings, the exit speed of a hit ball was as much as 5% faster with metal bats over wood.

“There’s more of a penalty when you’re not on the sweet spot with wood bats than with the other metal bats,” said Lloyd Smith, the director of WSU’s Sport Science Laboratory and lead author of the study.

The findings were published in The Journal of Sports Engineering and Technology.

According to WSU, metal bats were adopted in amateur baseball leagues back in the 1970s in part because wood bats break and can be costly over time.

Soon players noticed the hollow metal bats conferred an advantage from their “trampoline effect” –an advantage that grew as companies competed to make a better bat.

Seeing potential hazards, league officials tried to reign this in starting in the 1990s, ultimately restricting the use of metal bats to those that performed in a similar way to wood.

Despite the bat performance differences in this study, the skill of the hitters was still the biggest factor in how fast the ball came off the bat.

Smith emphasized that if players really want to improve their batting average, the best thing to do is not to improve their bat, but themselves.

“If you’re really trying to hit the ball far, you’re going to get a much bigger payoff by working out and getting stronger, especially if you’re a young kid and growing fast. That’s going to have a much larger effect on how hard you hit the ball, than on what bat you buy,” he said.

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