Hitting Baseballs in the cage

Welcome to Discuss Fastpitch

Your FREE Account is waiting to the Best Softball Community on the Web.

Nov 30, 2009
13
0
I always thought hitting baseballs was bad for a fastpitch bat because the baseball is harder in terms of core and compression.

The teams I am associated with both go to a cage with baseballs for front toss, and use them.

Realistically is it a bad idea for strong high school girls to hit baseballs with 300 dollar fastpitch bats, or is it fine for front toss???
 

Hitter

Banned
Dec 6, 2009
653
0
Howard has a post on the subject, but that is all we have hit for years in the cage and have never had an issue.

Are we talking an actual hardball or the hard durometer cage balls which in SOME cases are much harder than an actual hardball. I use a combination od tennis balls, hard balls, soft balls and a weighted 10.8 ounce pitching practice ball. I have never had a bat fail to my knowledge doing this,

Thanks Howard
 
Oct 19, 2009
1,827
0
We use baseballs all the time, my daughter uses a practice bat instead of her good bat. It is the same length and 2 ounces heaver. We purchased it at Wal-Mart for around $20.00. I taped some white duct tape on the sweet part of the bat to give her some since of barrel awareness. I like yourself was concerned of damaging an expensive bat.
 

Greenmonsters

Wannabe Duck Boat Owner
Feb 21, 2009
6,168
38
New England
Member - I'm an advocate of saving the gamer by using a back up bat in the cage, but preferably of the same length and weight as the gamer. A 2 oz weight difference seems quite a lot, possibly significant enough so that what you're working on in the cage won't translate to the field w/ the lighter game bat?

GM
 

Hitter

Banned
Dec 6, 2009
653
0
Member - I'm an advocate of saving the gamer by using a back up bat in the cage, but preferably of the same length and weight as the gamer. A 2 oz weight difference seems quite a lot, possibly significant enough so that what you're working on in the cage won't translate to the field w/ the lighter game bat?

GM

There was a study done on warm up bats and donuts etc and I will see if I can find it. There was someting about swinging bats within plus or minus 3 % of your game bat.

Thanks Howard
 
Jan 18, 2010
4,284
0
In your face
I think this is what your looking for on weighted bats and donuts. This is my first attempt at uploading youtube. if It doesn't work I'll try again.


 

Hitter

Banned
Dec 6, 2009
653
0
Member - I'm an advocate of saving the gamer by using a back up bat in the cage, but preferably of the same length and weight as the gamer. A 2 oz weight difference seems quite a lot, possibly significant enough so that what you're working on in the cage won't translate to the field w/ the lighter game bat?

GM

This is not the entire article and this is the reference document I got it from. The reason I brought it up was the difference in 2 ounces and what it means per the article'

DAVID J. SZYMANSKI,1 COOP DERENNE,2
AND FRANK J. SPANIOL
3
1Department of Kinesiology, Louisiana Tech University, Ruston, Louisiana; 2Department of Kinesiology and Leisure Science, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, Hawaii; and 3Department of Kinesiology, Texas A &M University–Corpus Christi,
Corpus Christi, Texas

The results of 4 studies (14, 16, 21, 44), presented in Table 1, reveal that average game
bat swing velocity was increased for high school, college, and ex-college baseball players after warming up in the on-deck circle using under- and overloaded bats within 6 12% (27–34 oz) of standard game bat weight (30 oz).

In addition, DeRenne and colleagues (14, 16, 21) have concluded that very
heavy (donut ring and 1445.8-g, or 51-oz, bat) or very light (652.0 g, or 23 oz) warm-up implements had adverse effects (decreases of 2.2 m_s21, or 5 mph, slower) on standard game bat (850.5 g, or 30 oz) velocity.

Montoya et al. (33) have reported that swinging a light (272.2 g, or 9.6 oz) or normal (893.0 g or 31.5 oz) bat produced the highest bat swing velocities compared with a heavy (1564.9 g, or 55.2 oz) bat in the on-deck circle.

Note: GOINGDEEP great timing as I just put the words to your video as to the research that was done...Thank you for the actual footage!

Thanks Howard
 
Last edited:

Forum statistics

Threads
42,830
Messages
679,474
Members
21,443
Latest member
sstop28
Top