The most overlooked technique for creating bat speed/power? Does bat speed = power?

Rolling Hard said:

I believe comparing grown men hitting a baseball with a 33 oz. bat and a 10 year old girl hitting a softball with a 18 oz bat is wrong. Let's say a grown man swings a 30 oz bat 30 mph at a basketball traveling 40 mph and a 10 year old girl does the same. The grip would matter.

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If they both hit it exactly on the sweet spot and have the same bat speed, it won't matter in terms of ball flight. If they have the same bat speed but hit it off the sweet spot it will. If you are contending the first sentence then you have to give a reason, backed by actual concrete data, as both physical experiment (with controlled variables) and theory say otherwise.

pattar said:

If they both hit it exactly on the sweet spot and have the same bat speed, it won't matter in terms of ball flight. If they have the same bat speed but hit it off the sweet spot it will. If you are contending the first sentence then you have to give a reason, backed by actual concrete data, as both physical experiment (with controlled variables) and theory say otherwise.

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Basketball would stay in contact with a bat longer than a softball.

ian said:

Basketball would stay in contact with a bat longer than a softball.

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Lol..ok fair enough..then his thought experiment was flawed as he didn't control for that

pattar said:

Lol..ok fair enough..then his thought experiment was flawed as he didn't control for that

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If he substituted a rubber ball and a clamped aluminum beam for his experiment would that be better or worse?

ian said:

If he substituted a rubber ball and a clamped aluminum beam for his experiment would that be better or worse?

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Better or worse in what sense? How it compares to softball? IMO, in order for the hands to have an impact on the ball-bat collision, whatever waves are reflected from knob end of the bat
have to travel fast enough to arrive before the ball leaves the bat. In the example you give, both of these things (wave speed and ball-bat contact time) would change as a beam with a fixed
end would have different modes with different wave speeds than a bat. There also wouldn't be any hoop modes but that isn't relevant for the grip question. In his example, at least he was using a bat so only one of those things would have changed, contact time.

The mass/strength of the hitter and the mass of ball would certainly change what the swing looks post impact, I gave that example previously when I mentioned the heavy
TCB balls.

I agree. A study on clamped aluminum beams and rubber balls is not a very good comparison for determining what happens in a baseball vs. bat collision.

It would be fun to study 23oz free bats propelled 63 MPH at 7oz. softballs traveling 55MPH. We know what would happen in the unlikely occasion they made black out contact. I wonder if the ball would 'win the war' and spin the bat on handle and end of bat contact.

ian said:

Grip matters in the contact phase of the swing. The lone exception is 'black out' sweet spot contact. The majority of in game contact in every level of play, is not 'black out' sweet spot hits. Nathan proved this. Can't argue against scientific evidence.

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ian said:

Just think about it. You don't need me or anyone else to explain it to you.

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I have thought about it, a little longer than I think you have, and why I'm asking you to clarify your understanding of what you think Nathan told you about the "method of support of the bat" at the moment of contact with the ball.

I only ask because none of us are trying to "argue against scientific evidence". In fact here's the summary of the report that Eric referenced, and that you said Professor Nathan told you something different in person wrt...

Dynamics of the baseball–bat collision - Alan M. Nathan (2000) said:

IV. SUMMARY

We have developed a model for the collision between the baseball and bat that takes into account the vibrational degrees of freedom of the bat. Although our technique for finding the normal modes closely parallels that of a previous investigation, our technique for the coupling between the ball and bat differs sharply. We have shown the model to be in excellent agreement with experimental data at low impact velocities. At the higher velocities more appropriate to the game of baseball, we show that the vibrations excited in the bat play a crucial role in determining the ball exit speed vf. In particular vf coincides with the rigid-body value only over a very small region in the barrel of the bat and drops off sharply for impacts removed from that region. Our calculations give several insights into the collision process. The most interesting of these is the observation that the handle of the bat has barely started to react to the impulse by the time the momentum transferred to the ball is complete and that any clamping action of the hands will affect the bat at the impact point only after the ball and bat have separated. From this we have concluded that the exit speed of the ball is essentially independent of the detailed size, shape, and method of support of the bat at distances far removed from the impact location.

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...where basically in the bold underlined; he concluded that "the exit speed of the ball [is] essentially independent of the....method of support of the bat" (ie. the grip).

I believe that you might have misunderstood that he was talking about the "sweet spot" ("rigid-body value only over a very small region in the barrel of the bat"), and how the numbers when not hitting the ball there "drops off sharply"...but that the moment of impact happens so quickly, that the "vibrations excited" from the contact of the barrel to ball "determining the ball exit speed vf"...happens so fast "that the handle of the bat has barely started to react to the impulse by the time the momentum transferred to the ball is complete", and therefore, the player's grip ("support method") on the bat "at distances far removed from the impact location"...is "essentially independent" of these collision vibrations that determine the exit velocity of bat to ball.

This is why Frazier was able to sit hit the ball out of the park w/o still holding the bat in his hands at contact, because "theoretically" (as I read it, pattar might interpret it otherwise), the impact vibrations generated at the moment of contact with the ball that where created by his bat speed into the ball at that exact moment...weren't able to transfer down the handle fast enough before the ball had already left contact with the ball to effect the "exit velocity" of the ball additionally or negatively regardless of grip (or even no grip) on the bat.

Do you think the ball would have left the park if it hit a 'no hands' handle?

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Of course not...just like it would be more likely that Todd was standing at the plate with half a bat in his hands had the ball hit the handle than it would be that the ball left the park...if he had whatever vise grip he would have had on the bat at the time.

Which I believe can also be concluded from Nathan's study of impact locations on the bat, and the resulting "vibrations excited" by these differing locations and the corresponding exit velocities from each of them....as it was more than likely those "vibrations excited" close to the handle would be taken into account for some of the degradation, and subsequent shearing of the bat that would leave him left holding only the handle in his hands if/when contact is made there.

Grip also matters when trying to efficiently generate bat speed.

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Yes, now this we are in agreement on, and what I was eluding to in my first reply to your statement wrt what you interpreted Nathan saying to you at one time.

EDIT: One last thought that may or may not play into the conversation, only because an assumptive correlation (probably more like two) has been made but not actually tested...and that's that a softball contact with a bat is or would be the same as that of the tested baseball to bat collision...and that the "vibrations excited" within metal alloy bats are the same (or similar) as to those of the tested wood bats. I'll just leave it at that.

Mudders Brudder said:

This is why Frazier was able to sit hit the ball out of the park w/o still holding the bat in his hands at contact, because "theoretically" (as I read it, pattar might interpret it otherwise), the impact vibrations generated at the moment of contact with the ball that where created by his bat speed into the ball at that exact moment...weren't able to transfer down the handle fast enough before the ball had already left contact with the ball to effect the "exit velocity" of the ball additionally or negatively regardless of grip (or even no grip) on the bat.

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Your interpretation is the same as mine. The only evidence that off-sweet spot contact will be effected by grip is that Dr. Nathan mentioned it to Ian. I don't believe he published anything with that conclusion. However it makes sense based upon the idea that higher modes will be excited more strongly with this type of contact. By higher, that means they have higher vibration frequencies (that is how they are ordered) and the wave speeds are proportional to the square root of the vibration frequencies. From what I have seen ball bat collision time is 0.7 ms (for baseball) Let us assume a 34 inch bat and sweet spot being 29 in. from the handle. The wave speed of a flexural/"bending" wave would have to be greater than 6905 ft/s ( (58 in. /0.7e-3s)/12 in/ft) in order to reach the contact point before the ball left the bat. A guess would be that these sorts of wave speeds would probably correspond to the 4th or 5th bending mode perhaps? Not sure.

Mudders Brudder said:

I have thought about it, a little longer than I think you have, and why I'm asking you to clarify your understanding of what you think Nathan told you about the "method of support of the bat" at the moment of contact with the ball.

I only ask because none of us are trying to "argue against scientific evidence". In fact here's the summary of the report that Eric referenced, and that you said Professor Nathan told you something different in person wrt...


...where basically in the bold underlined; he concluded that "the exit speed of the ball [is] essentially independent of the....method of support of the bat" (ie. the grip).

I believe that you might have misunderstood that he was talking about the "sweet spot" ("rigid-body value only over a very small region in the barrel of the bat"), and how the numbers when not hitting the ball there "drops off sharply"...but that the moment of impact happens so quickly, that the "vibrations excited" from the contact of the barrel to ball "determining the ball exit speed vf"...happens so fast "that the handle of the bat has barely started to react to the impulse by the time the momentum transferred to the ball is complete", and therefore, the player's grip ("support method") on the bat "at distances far removed from the impact location"...is "essentially independent" of these collision vibrations that determine the exit velocity of bat to ball.

This is why Frazier was able to sit hit the ball out of the park w/o still holding the bat in his hands at contact, because "theoretically" (as I read it, pattar might interpret it otherwise), the impact vibrations generated at the moment of contact with the ball that where created by his bat speed into the ball at that exact moment...weren't able to transfer down the handle fast enough before the ball had already left contact with the ball to effect the "exit velocity" of the ball additionally or negatively regardless of grip (or even no grip) on the bat.

Of course not...just like it would be more likely that Todd was standing at the plate with half a bat in his hands had the ball hit the handle than it would be that the ball left the park...if he had whatever vise grip he would have had on the bat at the time.

Which I believe can also be concluded from Nathan's study of impact locations on the bat, and the resulting "vibrations excited" by these differing locations and the corresponding exit velocities from each of them....as it was more than likely those "vibrations excited" close to the handle would be taken into account for some of the degradation, and subsequent shearing of the bat that would leave him left holding only the handle in his hands if/when contact is made there.

Yes, now this we are in agreement on, and what I was eluding to in my first reply to your statement wrt what you interpreted Nathan saying to you at one time.

EDIT: One last thought that may or may not play into the conversation, only because an assumptive correlation (probably more like two) has been made but not actually tested...and that's that a softball contact with a bat is or would be the same as that of the tested baseball to bat collision...and that the "vibrations excited" within metal alloy bats are the same (or similar) as to those of the tested wood bats. I'll just leave it at that.

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So you believe the bat would break in a 'no hands' collision. Interesting.

I have to ask. In your scenario how did the 'no hands' bat handle end up in Fraizers hand?