The sweet spot has long been talked about regarding baseball bats. Since sometime in 1919, bats have all been one piece and certain measurements. That hasn’t changed but the science behind them has. I interviewed Professor Lloyd Smith, who leads WSU’s Sports Science Laboratory.
“My first thought was smoke and mirrors. There really can’t be anything going on. As I thought about it more, there’s likely some more things that are happening that I don’t think there’s any way that this bat by itself explained what happened with the Yankees and the Brewers over the weekend. Other things must be at play rather than just this bat.”
Smith then asked, what could the torpedo bat be doing?
“There is a possibility that it could be moving the sweet spot of the bat to where the batter wants to hit. That’s an exciting idea if you can do that. That’s not going to add 100 feet to your distance, but it might help a little bit. That’s one potential thing that could be happening.”
Woah. That floored me. I never considered that. And then he continued.
“I am quickly looking at bats in my lab now to see if we can modify them and test them.”
Now, what if the pitchers don’t know where the sweet spot is, something they want to avoid. Does that give the advantage to the hitter until they figure this out?
“Well, yeah, to the extent that pitchers are able to throw the ball to miss the sweet spot,” Smith added. “They are generally looking for corners of the strike zone. Which was doing the same thing but a batter, I would think, is wanting to move the sweet spot of the bat. Not to fool the pitcher but because the batter can’t get the ball on the sweet spot. Which is what happened with the Yankees.”
Smith then got deeper into the conversation.
“The other thing is, and this has bothered me for a couple of years regarding the mass properties of the bat. Most people are interested in the weight or more specifically the drop weight,” Smith explained. “The difference between the bat length in inches and its weight in ounces. A pro wood bat of –3 is a common drop weight. For wood, drop weight does tell you a lot about the weight of the bat.
“There’s another property called the swing weight. It’s what it’s called in golf. As an engineer we talk about the mass moment of inertia (MOI). It tells you how the weight is distributed. That’s a much more important number than just the weight of the bat. If you are taking the largest diameter of the bat and moving it inside a few inches. You’re not just changing the geometry of the bat. You are changing its swing weight. Even if its total weight doesn’t change in some way. That has important effects.”
What can it help?
“The biggest could be with the batting average,” Smith surmised. “If you have a tendency to hit the ball on the inside, then you get one of these torpedo bats, you are doing two things; you are increasing the area size of the typical bat you usually hit and you are also reducing the swing weight which allows you to control the bat a little better you would have otherwise.”
If you remember, Barry Bonds ushered in the maple bat craze in baseball. Those bats were cheaper, and players felt they were better than ash, but the good professor shot that down.
I talked about the “placebo effect” and that’s not likely but always something to look out for. Weather, dome or not dome, no change. I had other angles that I will hold back on until we start getting more data and will re-visit this later this season.
Note: Smith’s group knows about this subject and is recognized as the leading authority in the science of bats and balls.
