As a kid growing up in Indiana, I always strove to find the perfect fit in bats, one that had a sweet spot as big as Indianapolis. I never knew the exact location of that spot other than it was somewhere near the end of the bat, but I knew it when I hit a pitched ball there. In experiments conducted by Dr. Daniel A. Russell of Kettering University, he examined the sweet spot in terms of two separate criteria:

* the location where the measured performance of the bat is maximized, and
* the location where the hand sensation, or sting, is minimized.

He had numerous opinions on where this location was on a bat. A list follows:

* the location which produces least vibrational sensation, or sting, in the batter’s hands
* the location which produces maximum batted ball speed
* the location where maximum energy is transferred to the ball
* the location where coefficient of restitution is maximum
* the center of percussion
* the node of the fundamental vibrational mode
* the region between nodes of the first two vibrational modes
* the region between center of percussion and node of first vibrational mode

I have a clue about what these opinions mean. How about you?

Dr. Russell explained that most bats have “sweet spots” in different locations, thereby leading to his conclusion its location is more a region than a spot, generally located approximately 4-7 inches from the end of the barrel where the batted-ball speed is the highest and the sting in the hands is minimized.

He explains that, although bat manufacturers often advertise that their aluminum bats have a wider sweet spot than do wood bats of 토토사이트 their competitors, these claims are difficult to verify.

One batting cage study by F.W. Sears found that aluminum and wood baseball bats have similar sweet spots in terms of size according to the range of locations on the barrel that produced the highest batted-ball speeds. While the widths of the regions were the same, the lighter metal bats made contact on and away from the sweet spot more often.

After his thorough experimentation, Dr. Russell concluded the following:

There is no single definition of the sweet spot for a baseball or a softball bat. There are locations on the barrel that result in maximum performance and there are locations that result in minimal discomfort in the hands. These locations are not the same for a given bat and there is considerable variation in locations between bats. Hopefully this summary will enhance the understanding of what the sweet spot is and what it is not as well as encouraging further research into the quest for the perfect bat.

Dr. Russell showed the wide distribution of sweet spot impact locations against different batted ball speeds. For both wood and metal bats the impact location occurred between 4-7 inches from the top of the barrel of the bat. Interestingly, the lighter metal bats were able to make impact more often of pitches in excess of 100mph whereas the wood bats less often. There’s not too many pitchers that can throw 100mph pitches more than once in a row. It clearly sounds like we are dealing with a sweet region, not a spot. I may have been right as a kid. Somewhere near the baseball bat barrel’s thickness. That’s Hoosier common sense for you. Our thanks to Dr. Russell and F.W. Sears for their work in this beloved area of science. Keep up the grail search for that perfect bat.