How Much Does a Composite Bats Performance Improve as it is Broken-in?
By how much might a typical bat improve with use? A recent Master’s Thesis from the Washington State University[1] studied the performance of composite slow-pitch softball bats and the performance improvements gained through various ways a bat might be modidified. The bar chart at right shows test results[1,2] for three bats that were broken-in naturally by hitting balls. Bats JN05 and JE04 are multi-walled composite bats and JA05 is a multi-walled aluminum bat. First, the bats were performance tested brand new, right out of the wrapper, in accordance with the high-speed cannon test (ASTM F2219) used by the ASA to certify bats. Then each bat was used to hit ASA certified 0.44 COR 375lb softballs 500 times in an indoor batting cage. Balls were pitched slow-pitch style, and batters were experience amateurs. After 500 hits the bats were performance tested again. Then another 500 hits and another performance check, and so on until 2000 hits were accumlated. The results in the bar graph sho
