OT: Aluminum bats or wood bats in college?

[Golddore68]

This has been debated ad nauseum, but what does everyone think?

In college they allow aluminum bats. But when you get to the majors (or minors) they are not allowed. Batters have to adjust to wooden bats.

The issue was that line drives off aluminum bats can seriously injure or even kill pitchers. They don’t come as hard off wooden bats.

I’m not sure if I agree with this logic. Line drives can come off wooden bats just as hard and major and minor league pitchers have been seriously injured by line drives too.

Case in point: Daniel Ponce de Leon, a minor league pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, was hit by a line drive off a wooden bat in 2017. It almost killed him.

I have also seen players injured when wooden bats split or break while batters are swinging them and pieces of the bat go flying through the air. That’s not something you have to worry about with aluminum bats.

And with wooden bats you have the possibility of cheating, corking the bat, or putting pine tar on it, as George Brett tried to do back in 1983.

If aluminum bats are so dangerous, should they be used at the college and high school level?

Or conversely, if they’re not, why don’t they allow them in the pros?

[DivergentDore]

The BB Core composite bats are designed to be fairly even to the top tier wooden bats with similar velocities off the barrels. The old single core bats when I played were "hot". The advances to double core bats were "really hot". The later triple core bats were weapons and too dangerous at any level. They've found the correct balance with the bats, now they need to stop screwing with the ball. One ball was used this whole season but a "new one" was introduced just before postseason play. End result- homeruns up alot and pitcher velocities down 2-3mph for most pitchers on fastballs.

[commadore]

This has been debated ad nauseum, but what does everyone think?

In college they allow aluminum bats. But when you get to the majors (or minors) they are not allowed. Batters have to adjust to wooden bats.

The issue was that line drives off aluminum bats can seriously injure or even kill pitchers. They don’t come as hard off wooden bats.

I’m not sure if I agree with this logic. Line drives can come off wooden bats just as hard and major and minor league pitchers have been seriously injured by line drives too.

Case in point: Daniel Ponce de Leon, a minor league pitcher for the St. Louis Cardinals, was hit by a line drive off a wooden bat in 2017. It almost killed him.

I have also seen players injured when wooden bats split or break while batters are swinging them and pieces of the bat go flying through the air. That’s not something you have to worry about with aluminum bats.

And with wooden bats you have the possibility of cheating, corking the bat, or putting pine tar on it, as George Brett tried to do back in 1983.

If aluminum bats are so dangerous, should they be used at the college and high school level?

Or conversely, if they’re not, why don’t they allow them in the pros?

I think it is a cost issue now. Hard to break an aluminum bat, but wooden bats rarely last a month.