Best bat for pitching machine work

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radness

Possibilities & Opportunities!
Dec 13, 2019
7,270
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Weigh them both.

Then push your thumb nail hard into a new dimple and a new stitch ball.

I don’t know what they are working on there. I will say that we used it as a drill occasionally and both dd’s are pretty good hitters, lol

Bad contact destroys bats. That’s why a hack machine with stitch balls (that move more than normal p or dimples) wrecks bats.
Tend to agree on hack contact.
Will add bad contact in games to that!

Longevity of a bat may very well be pendant on if its hitting the ball with correct contact.

So given the two scenarios
good contact vs bad contact

If bad contact is made during games and that has the same potential to destroy the bat as being in a cage. Then maybe it doesn't matter to use the bat in a cage? Cuzzz it could get damaged at any time. hmmm 🤔


Good contact
Repeatedly is hard to measure. Compared to the occasional miss-hits that were not in a bat's sweet spot.
So maybe destroying a bat is truly unquantifiable. Because we can't determine exactly when damage occurs.
(🙂 I just wanted to use the word unquantifiable)
 

LEsoftballdad

DFP Vendor
Jun 29, 2021
2,838
113
NY
A good point of reference would be looking at wood bats in MLB. Most don't break on home runs, although I did see Brian Downing break one on a home run at the old Yankee Stadium. Mariano Rivera made a career of breaking bats on jam shots to lefties, or off the end for righties. Squaring up the ball on the barrel rarely results in a broken bat.

While wood and composite bats are different, the principle of solid contact remains the same.
 
May 16, 2016
946
93
I guess at some point you accumulate a number of bats, and practice bat is not really an issue anymore... I'd buy her a new gamer, and let her current bat become the practice bat.

My older DD has about 6 at last count... My younger DD is at 3.
 
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
I am guessing this is a complicated physics problem (you would have to look at how the physics that causes the trampoline effect, basically the hoop mode frequencies of the bat, is changed by degradation in the composite material) but would one expect the performance of a composite bat to degrade after a certain amount of use? Or do bats break nowadays before you hear anybody say it went "dead"?

If one can expect degradation then using a cage bat would make sense from that alone.
 
Last edited:
Dec 11, 2010
4,713
113
Amateur Softball Association. Official Rules of Softball. 2001: 60-61, 1995: 62. "The 12-inch (30.0 cm) ball shall be between 11 7/8 inches (30.0 cm) and 12 1/8 inches (31.0 cm) in circumference and shall weigh between 6 1/4 ounces (180 g) and seven ounces (200.0 g)."

My loving bride re-optimized the location of my digital bat weighing scale.

This is close enough for “Government Work” I think. 5267AAAC-7E18-4AE6-99DD-43BFBBB79915.jpeg19252B47-CE28-41B6-BFDF-46F6DAD8BE6C.jpeg
 
Dec 11, 2010
4,713
113
I am guessing this is a complicated physics problem (you would have to look at how the physics that causes the trampoline effect, basically the hoop mode frequencies of the bat, is changed by degradation in the composite material) but would one expect the performance of a composite bat to degrade after a certain amount of use? Or do bats break nowadays before you hear anybody say it went "dead"?

If one can expect degradation then using a cage bat would make sense from that alone.
I always have to trust you on the e=mc2 stuff.

We did always have a spare but dd tended to use the same one in games and practice until it went south.

I kind of wish all this was on the recent thread Rad started about machine use.

And one of the problems with my hillbilly science is @CoreSoftball20 is not a fan of machine balls and he has been around a lot of bats for a long time.

My other oft used point is that college kids hit machine balls constantly. No itty bitty bat breaker in 14u is swinging harder than a college kid who is in the weight room constantly and can legally order a Margarita after practice.
 
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
I always have to trust you on the e=mc2 stuff.

We did always have a spare but dd tended to use the same one in games and practice until it went south.

I kind of wish all this was on the recent thread Rad started about machine use.

And one of the problems with my hillbilly science is @CoreSoftball20 is not a fan of machine balls and he has been around a lot of bats for a long time.

My other oft used point is that college kids hit machine balls constantly. No itty bitty bat breaker in 14u is swinging harder than a college kid who is in the weight room constantly and can legally order a Margarita after practice.
All that and you didn't answer my question :ROFLMAO:.. unless by "went South" you meant it went dead vs breaking. Any of your DDs ever say "Dad, this thing is dead" (and you believed them... 😝 )
 
Dec 11, 2010
4,713
113
All that and you didn't answer my question :ROFLMAO:.. unless by "went South" you meant it went dead vs breaking. Any of your DDs ever say "Dad, this thing is dead" (and you believed them... 😝 )
Aha! Massive structural failure lol!

The first good bat I ever bought was a CF5 Insane I think. (Super cool looking, yellow and black.) My very inexperienced dd thought it went dead. I got all worked up about it because I too was inexperienced. I bet that thing was smoking hot but something changed in her swing….
 
Jun 8, 2016
16,118
113
Aha! Massive structural failure lol!

The first good bat I ever bought was a CF5 Insane I think. (Super cool looking, yellow and black.) My very inexperienced dd thought it went dead. I got all worked up about it because I too was inexperienced. I bet that thing was smoking hot but something changed in her swing….
So other than that no evidence that performance degraded over time...
 

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