[greymule]

Very interesting.

As we all know, measuring the exit speed is an attempt to put some limit on the heat of the bat. However, just as two cars with the same rated horsepower can be vastly different in terms of performance, so it is with bats.

For example, what if the exit speed never exceeds 98 mph, but balls that are barely tapped exit at 85 instead of 65?

In the early 1960s, some company (just for the scientific achievement, not to sell bats) developed a fiberglass baseball bat that they believed would allow Maury Wills of the Dodgers to hit 60 home runs a year. Oddly, the limit of the distance someone could hit a ball with this bat was no farther than what was possible with wood bats. However, the fiberglass bat did turn ordinary fly balls into home runs.

So if the league decided to measure the bats based on maximum distance capability, the fiberglass bat would have been legal.