Which Producers A Bigger Hit: Aluminum Or Wooden Essay

Scientific evidence that batted ball speed is faster for aluminum baseball bats.
Given the amount of controvery over the metal versus wood bat issue, there have been surprisingly few scientific studies comparing the performance of wood and metal baseball bats. There is one paper from 1977, when aluminum bats were just beginning to assert their prominence, which concluded that the batted ball speed of an aluminum baseball bat was about 3.85 mph faster than a wood baseball bat.[1] The study was conducted with six skilled college players during more than a dozen batting practice sessions over a 5-day period. Each player would take several swings with either a wood or aluminum bat (randomly chosen), rest for 10 minutes, then take several swings with the other bat. Balls were pitched from both pitching machines and regular batting practice pitchers, but pitchers were found to be more consistent. During the testing, the average pitched ball speed was 56.6 mph. Batted ball speeds were measured using a radar gun. Data was collected for each player until 30 line drives were produced within a certain range of locations in the outfield. The results were an average batted ball speed (for line drives) of 88.6 mph for the wood bat and 92.5 mph for the aluminum bat. A second phase of the study attempted to explain the increase in performance of the aluminum bat by comparing the size of the "sweet spot" for the two bats by locating the center-of-percussion. The study found that the aluminum bat appeared to have a larger COP than the wood bat.
In contrast to the 1977 study, a 1989 study concluded that metal bats did not outperform wood bats.[2] In this study balls were shot from a pitching machine towards bats held stationary (without swinging) in the hands of a player. The 1989 study found that the rebound speed of the ball depended strongly on impact location, and somewhat on how strongly the player was gripping the bat. A third study in the early 1990's also concluded that...