What Advantages do composite baseball bats have over aluminum baseball bats? And are they worth the extra cost?
Composite bats do offer distinct advantages to aluminum bats but they will certainly have a shorter life as they can, and probably will, break. They’re also much more susceptible to the cold. All bats warn you to not use them when the temperature is below 50 degrees. For aluminum bats it’s just a safety valve for the manufacturer. For composite bats it’s the real deal.
Here’s the short version of the advantages composite bats offer. For a detailed, in-depth analysis click here.
– The Swing Weight is More Easily Controlled: The closer the bat’s balance point is to the handle; the easier it is to swing. Composite bats make it easier to shift mass around from barrel end to handle to control the location of the balance point and thus the swing weight.
– Bending Stiffness May Be Tuned: Higher bending stiffness means that the frequencies of the bending vibrations for the lowest bending mode fall into the range where the hands are most sensitive to vibration. Composite materials, however, give the manufacturer the option of lowering the bending stiffness of the bat, without changing any of the stiffness properties in the barrel which affect performance. This means that one might be able to design a bat which would “feel” better or sting less by adjusting the bending stiffness.
– Trampoline Effect May Be Tuned: Composite materials have a distinct advantage over aluminum in that they are anisotropic, which means that the elastic properties of a composite material are not the same in all directions. The stiffness in the longitudinal (along the length of the bat) and circumferential (around the barrel of the bat) directions can be modified pretty much independently of each other. This means that you can make the barrel of a composite bat soft while still maintaining the stiffness in the handle.
– Bending vibrations Are More Highly Damped: The damping rate dictates how quickly the amplitude of a vibrating object decays. The damping values for all-composite bats or bats with composite handles are at least twice as high as aluminum bats, and some composite bats have as nearly 10 times more damping than aluminum bats. This is partly why composite bats are advertised as having a “more forgiving sweet spot.”
– No “Ping”Sound: Oddly enough kids have become so accustomed to hearing the ping their initial thought is this bat sounds like wood. Hence they think it has no pop. Don’t be fooled. Plus the sound will remind the “old-timers” of their youth baseball days.
