Maple vs Ash baseball bats

[Lee Schierer]

Part of the problem is that the old growth Ash is all but gone. The new Ash we have has larger growth rings and is not nearly as strong or dense as the old wood was. College players have trouble adapting to the heavier bats in the ML because they are used to aluminum bats from Little League on up. Players are trying Maple because they feel they can get around on the ball quicker and want a lighter wooden bat.

I would suspect that if any of the real old timers from the Babe Ruth era were asked, they tried Maple back then and discarded it because it broke too much.

[Joe Shinall]

Totally not on the ash vs maple. But I played college and minor leagues for a couple years and I still play in a mens league. In college we had metal of course, but I preferred to hit batting practice with Ash. Didn't crack as much as maple. Broke 4 maple bats my sophomore year and only one ash. Used ash for my one half year in minors and now I use birch. Wish they had birch easier to get back then because I love it! Nice sound, been using the same bat for 2 years now with no cracks.

Of course, it also depends on if you know how to swing a wooden bat and if you get jammed vs hitting the sweet spot.

[John Yogus]

I've turned a few bats. I've been able to track the fungos (used by coaches for fielding practice) I've turned as I personally know the coaches who use them. The ash fungos that have seen service seem prone to dent a bit. The maple fungos are still going strong, in about as good as condition as can be expected. One of the coaches played in the minors and speaks highly of the maple (the wood, not my turning). I can't atest to either as I'm not much of a baseball player, but just my observations.

[Arnold E Schnitzer]

Maple has never been a structural wood for any purposes

How about all the instruments of the violin family, which happen to be under tremendous pressure?

[Charles Shenk]

Perhaps Hickory would be a good wood for bats. Something hard and stringy that won't shatter.

[Chip Lindley]

Yeah, why not Hickory!?! Why has it never been used for bats? It's tougher and more interlocked than either ash or maple. It makes great axe and maul handles! Maybe too dense? Too heavy?

[Danny Burns]

That's odd. I remember reading an article a few years back about how MLB players were switching to maple bats because they lasted longer. Maple is denser than ash, so they had to bore a hole in the end to keep them within weight specs.

That is the problem with maple bats, they last longer.

The baseball bat making company called "Bat" which was all the steroid sluggers preference, (with or without cork, optional) could go through a whole season with just 1 or 2 bats, and they would use it during batting practice as well.

If the maple bat is retired after a certain number of games, then it is safer than the ash bat, which can break at any time during it's use, as apposed to the later breaking maple.
The hard part was trying to get players to part with a favorite bat before it breaks.

[Danny Burns]

Someone is going to get seriously injured or killed because of Maple bats and maybe then, the Player's Ass'n will give in to an outright ban on them.

I have heard of fans being killed by bats long before maple appeared on the scene, and the baseball itself has been responsible for deaths as well.

In hockey, they finally put up netting all around the end-zones, to protect fans from pucks, yet how many pucks went into the stands before this protective measure was done.

John Olerud wore a baseball batting helmet, all the time.

There is a reason why they teach people to never take their eye off the ball.

The question is not one of avoidance, though zero tolerance should be the goal, but one of acceptable risk. Maple meets or exceeds ash for safety IF it is retired from play before it reaches it's high rate of breakage that happens very late in the life of the bat. This is not the case for ash.

Please note that I avoided NASCAR deaths as they only use maple/ash bats when settling the after crash fights behind closed doors.

So tell me if you are facing Roger Clemens, and you break your bat, do you want to break an ash bat or a maple one? You know he's going to throw it back at you in a fit of rage, so which one is going to hurt you the least?

[James Carmichael]

Hmm, I thought it was the other way around: the problem with maple is it shows no external signs of wear, then snaps in half, sending a sharp projectile flying through the infield. Ash bats show when they're ready to be retired, or shatter when they blow.

Hickory is incredibly strong, but too heavy for bats of the right dimension. I use it a lot as it's cheap, and I like the looks. One day I, needing a thin stick to poke something with, I pulled a straight-grained hickory cutoff out of the bin apprx 18" x 3/4w x 1/8t and tried to break it in half. It was well beyond the shape of one of those breast cancer ribbons before raising a splinter.

I've heard of MLB players using birch.

[Joe Spear]

Hickory bats were once used in the major leagues. Babe Ruth had a 47-ounce one. But today it is considered too heavy. Whatever happened to the real men of baseball?

[Danny Burns]

For those interested in making bats here is a link showing the job being done.

http://www.highlandwoodworking.com/w...seballbat.html

[Danny Burns]

Maple has a shorter grain structure than ash, hickory, black locust and such. Decades ago, players used those woods because they were strong. If one was to make steam bent chair parts, it probably would not be maple that we reached for first. Maple is lighter than ash, but does not take the inside pitches as well, nor the outside pitches off of the end. When an ash bat "breaks", it tends to splinter, but a maple bat fractures in such a way it looks like it got sawed off usually. Rarely does a maple bat have a long fracture. I modified ash Louisville Sluggers for the Cape Cod baseball League players through the 80's and 90's. All they wanted was the right length, and as light as possible. Maple is supposed to feel lighter. Eventually, MLB will ban maple bats, it is on the agenda.

Yes the two woods break differently, but all that needs to be done is a study were the maple bat is new, and see how it takes the inside pitch.

Major league players are using 1 or 2 bats for a whole season, for game play and batting practice, and you have to believe that during all that use they see the odd ball inside.
It is just that after numerous inside hits, they will break, so all that is needed is the bat needs to be retired before it reaches the later stages of use.

Let me see ash go through a whole season. Not very likely, so what will hurt a teams winning percentage more, lots of broken bats, or fewer broken bats?

Just get rid of the bat after so many hits, that's all.

[Dan Lee]

I seem to recall an article that reported that barry Bonds worked with a company to develop maple bats. Then after Barry Bonds hit all those HRs in 2001 with a maple bats there was a huge increase in MLB players switching to maple bats.
Barry never told them they also needed the 'juice' to go with the bats