I don't quite understand MLB's weird approach to the growing broken bat problem in baseball. I imagine that the only thing that will prompt anything more than a cursory "investigation" will be serious injury or worse to a player, an umpire or possibly a fan.
I don't have the statistics as to the average number of bats broken in each MLB game this year, but just from watching I can say... It's alot. Sure, they have commissioned studies on several thousand bats that have broken. These studies were expensive and involved a Harvard Statistician, a Massachusetts-Lowell mechanical engineering professor and a wood-certification company. They studied the broken bats and tried to figure out why.
Guess what? There are bat companies out there and wood types out there that don't break. Did they study those? Nope. Big Frank Thomas used a bat that broke maybe once a year. Twice at the most. Did they study that wood type or manufacturer to see what they were doing right? Nope. Seems kinda silly to look at one side of the box. Even sillier to look at that side of the box from inside the box.
Get your thinking caps on guys. MLB has got it's share of problems right now for sure. The last thing it needs is to have a pitcher irreparably harmed by a flying missile because the powers that be don't have the sense to conduct a study properly.
What's worse is this problem is not that hard to fix. Let me come back to this.
Major League Baseball rule 1.10(a) describes the specifications of a bat:
"The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2 3/4" in diameter at the thickest part, and not more than 42 inches in length. Bats shall be one piece of solid wood."
The last sentence is your problem. "Bats shall be one piece of solid wood." Why?
There are a couple of companies out there right now that have MLB approval for their bats to be used in the Minor Leagues. Brett Bros. is one of these companies. The company is owned by Hall of Famer George Brett. What makes a Brett bat different? Simple Simon, he uses several "planks" of wood (the type of wood can vary from bamboo to maple to ash) that are layered to form a billet. The woods are melded together with a special glue process. When sufficiently bonded, the billet is lathed into a particular model bat. This process makes the wood bat incredibly strong and resistant to breakage.
More importantly, it does NOT change the game. It's still a wood bat. The ball doesn't come off the barrel any different than it does with a normal "one piece" wood bat. One professional team broke nearly 50 bats a season before switching to Brett Bros. bats. Guess what, in the next two seasons the entire team broke a total of 4 bats!
Come On. Who is making the decisions that allow these bats in Minor Leagues and not the Major Leagues. Why wouldn't you? You think George Brett is going to tarnish the tradition of baseball? No. He has made it better because he is thinking outside of that damn box.
Another company has recently decided to venture into this new concept of "assembling" a bat. This company uses a very unique approach that makes all the sense in the world. They have taken the Brett Bat concept one step further. This company is called Radial Bats. I've swung these bats and am very impressed. Time will tell if these are more durable than those made by Brett, but the concept is impressive.
Each Radial bat consists of twelve wedges that are flawlessly milled with patent pending methods. Then each wedge is perfectly aligned to provide great strength in every orientation.
The bottom line is this... MLB needs to figure out that these types of wood bats will not change the game. They don't look any different, they don't sound any different, they don't perform any different EXCEPT when it comes to breakage. They DON'T break nearly as often as what they are allowing in the Major Leagues at this time.
MLB has struck out on this one.
