Go, Phils! (I know, we are not doing well- but I still support them. With a 2+ hour drive – each way- as a season ticket holder.  I even got back last night at 2 AM- and was at a meeting by 5:20 AM this morning.) I’ve been a Phanatic since I was 12. When Jim Bunning pitched a perfect game on Father’s Day. But, I’m not writing about the Phils, per se…

No, I’m talking about baseball bats. You know- the ones that seem to shatter once an inning. It’s been bothering me. I could not recall this wood-splattering moment occurring when I was younger. Neither I nor my son recall this phenomenon when he was first introduced (indoctrinated?) to the Phils, back when the venue was Veterans Stadium (now it’s Citizens Bank Park).

You see, it seems that some time ago, the year of 9/11, maple bats have been overtaking the tried-and-true ash bats as the weapon of choice. (I wonder what Roy Hobbs [Bernard Malamud’s The Natural; which became a movie starring Robert Redford] would be thinking about this.) About 2/3 of MLB bats are currently comprised of maple, now.

Why? Because players think you can swing the bat faster. They think it has more “pop”. It does have a hard surface- but as I mentioned above, these woods have a tendency to break. No, they have a tendency to explode. And, that means players are at risk. Not just the batter, but those nearby who can be hit by the various shards moving at high velocities.

This is not an isolated observation. A few years ago, 5000 bats broke in one season- with about 1/2 of them exploding more than breaking. Given that last year 60000 bats were used in the Major Leagues (MLB), this is way too ordinary an occurrence.

Enter science. MLB asked the US Forest Service to help. And, the Forest Products Laboratory [FPL] (Madison, Wisconsin) answered the call. They examined the bats- and the wood- to determine why it was so brittle and how it could be made safer. Because MLB had no intention of having fewer multi-base hits and reverting to ash bats.

This research began in 2008- the year of the 5000 broken bats. David Kretschmann was the lead scientist working at FPL working on a solution. Or, at least a definition of the science involved. One thing the researchers did was to develop a new statistic- multipiece failures per game [MPF]. (Baseball is the one sport that thrives on statistics.)

It turns out that the natural orientation of the grain within the wood was the issue. Ash trees have xylem and phloem (the veinlike vessels that transport water up and down the trees); moreover, these are relatively large and are arrayed in the growth rings. Not so for maple trees, where these structures are scattered throughout the wood- almost in a random fashion.

This means those round cylinders cut of the tree, the billets, that are converted into bats can’t easily follow the grain of the wood. (You know, Roy Hobbs explained this to Bobby Savoy, the bat boy, who made that famed “Savoy Special” thayt played into the story’s fairy tale ending.) The more the cut deviates from the grain of the wood, the more shatter prone the bat.

And, now, as of the All Star Game earlier this month, MLB announced that the changed specs for its bats are proving a positive result. Thicker handles. Minimum wood density. Weight-to-length ratios. And, the grain in the bat must be within 3% of the path of the wood’s original grain. (They even blot the wood with ink, letting it bleed into the grain, so the grain is more visible to the bat-makers.)

Viper Bats decided to use the rules for splitting fence rails to make its cylindrical billets. (These guys supply the best team in baseball- the Phils!) The Louisville Slugger uses a slightly different technique. (Hillerick & Bradsby Company, the owner, supplies 1/2 of all the MLB bats.)

And, the results? The MPF in 2008 was almost 1.0. Within a year, the MPF dropped to 0.69 (first half of the season). This year- it’s been 0.47.

There is a downside, of course. Viper reports that they used to sell about six (6) bats to each player- now it’s only 3…

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