The Ultimate Guide to Why Does MLB Use Wood Bats?
Have you ever questioned why Major league baseball professionals don’t need to use metal bats whenever they strike? If you practiced junior league baseball as a youngster, you most likely had to use an aluminium baseball bat to strike the baseball. Why it is that major league baseball professionals do not use metal bats, and why does MLB use wood bats? In order to answer all of these questions, let us break down the arguments.
Table of Contents
Wooden Bats adds Safety For Players and Fans
Both from minor and major divisions, Pro baseball athletes generally hit the ball incredibly fast. On September 11, Vladimir Guerrero JR smashed the most robust ball of the year, registering in here at 118 miles an hour. Vladimir Guerrero JR would also have hammered the baseball considerably harder at opposing party members and spectators in the stadium if he would have just used an aluminium baseball bat rather than a wooden bat. For the protection of athletes’ responses and audiences’ capability to defend themselves from a batted baseball, professional athletes solely utilize wooden bats to strike.
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More Skill and Timing
Baseball batters are recognized for their exceptional hand and eye synchronization. They can match up the beautiful area of the bat to the baseball when a ball is delivered to them to strike. Apart from an aluminium baseball bat, which accounts for all collisions, wooden bats solely adapt for striking the perfect spot. Home runs are probable when the ball touches the right balance of the bat.
Decreases the Advantage for the Hitter
Major league baseball does not employ metal bats considering batters have exceptional hand-eye balance and batting power. A major league baseball player might strike the ball considerably stronger with their remarkable swinging rate, even far than they already do with an aluminium baseball bat. To use a metallic bat could enhance batting statistics in baseball and provide batters with an unfair competitive advantage against pitchers.
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The History of the Game won’t allow Metal Bats for Hitters
You might expect to see a lot of criticism from historiography if the fundamentals of baseball are amended. You can find experts to mock at the thought of altering the game, whether it was to regulate the number of stitches on a baseball if there should be a DH in both leagues, and anything else. Metal bats will never again be allowed into the sport due to the apparent unjustified benefit of analyzing prior performers’ stats, that is certain.
What Color Can an MLB Bat Be?
Raw, flaming, temper, black, brown, grey, and cherry are the shades that Major league baseball permits for bats. In combination with these same shades, Major League Baseball enables players to sign their names on the bat. Meanwhile, Major league players can carry a pink bat to encourage awareness about breast cancer on Mother’s Day.
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Popular Baseball Bat Manufacturers
Today, there are far too many baseball bat brand names in major league baseball. Louisville Slugger, Marucci, Rawlings, and Easton are a few of the best baseball bat manufacturers in competitive tournaments. Pro players would also like to personalize their bats, and so some hitters will be using multiple colors of the same bat to hit.
Wooden Bats for Raising Awareness
Since 2006, MLB players have used pink baseball bats to commemorate Mother’s Day and raise breast cancer awareness. Major league baseball professionals carry pink armbands, pendants, batting gloves, and cleats.
Pink wooden bats, however, seem to be the most noticeable throughout the game. In collaboration with the sport, Susan G. Komen for the Cure is raising awareness about breast cancer.
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How is a Wooden Bat Made?
The process of making a wooden bat for baseball requires several steps. Firstly, you need to select the appropriate wooden composition for the bat, as Major league baseball only recognizes six major types of materials. Among the six trees, Ash, True Hickory, Red Oak, Sugar Maple, Yellow Birch, and Japanese Ash were used. As a quick reminder, maple, as well as ash bats, are by far the most frequently used in professional sports.
The tubular design of the bat is constructed after acquiring the necessary wood material. Upon confirming that the bat’s dimensions and mass are well within Major league baseball standards, the bat is passed through such a piece of machinery to provide it with its striated texture. After running through the process of building the bat, you seal it off with a finishing layer.
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What is a Corked Bat?
Now since you understand how and where to construct a wooden bat, let us just speak on what a corked bat is and why this is not permitted in baseball. Rather than just being a solid hard wooden bat, a corked bat is a specialized baseball bat stuffed with corks. To provide an illegitimate edge, competitors punch a hole in the base of the bat and place the corks.
Corking a bat indicates that the bulk of the bat is lightweight so that you really can stroke it quicker. The ideal weight of a baseball needs to be more than 32 ounces. There have already been a few noteworthy incidents in baseball in which a corked bat has been used throughout the match. In 2003, the Chicago Cubs’ Sammy Sosa was by far the most prominent one.
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The Bottom Line on Why Does MLB Use Wood Bats?
Why MLB uses wood bats? Well, there are lots of reasons why baseball games persist in using wooden bats. Several justifications should be for the show’s authenticity, such as through statistics, while others are just for the undue competition in the market that aluminium bats would have on the game. Whereas aluminium bats are entirely suitable in junior leagues, pro hitters have far too much expertise to be using these. Experienced batters need to strike the baseball on the prime spot with a wooden baseball bat to hit a home run, enabling even more aggressive gameplay on the pitch or ground.
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