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I understand your disagreement with my response and I was also frustrated with not finding a more specific answer.
1) There is no case or rule about bat hits ball when dropped by the batter, unless you consider all releases of the bat as thrown like 7-3-6, although the wording and the case for it clearly imply thrown as flying through the air in the direction of an infielder as opposed to a broken part of the bat doing the same. That rule is under batting infractions, which means to me undesired behavior, rather than simply dropping the bat where it will accidentally come in contact with the ball.
2) Usually, the ball is still moving when hit by the bat, so ball hitting bat or bat hitting ball is ambiguous at best, possibly synonymous. As I said: "c) drops the bat to intentionally contact the ball (fair) is a dead ball and an out. Of course, (b) says the ball hits the bat; but the implication of "intentionally" in (c) is obviously that unintentionally is not INT. There is nothing in the book about impetus of the bat or the ball, just intent or not"
3) I understood Rachel's original question to be mainly about intent ("bat hits ball unintentionally") and so my emphasis was on that and about the codes being pretty much the same.
Just to make this more fun, yesterday we had a 3X, the batter bunted, then tipped the ball a second time, then dropped the bat and it hit the ball again. Of course, only the batter and I (maybe the catcher) knew about the second hit, so there was much confusion about how the contact everyone saw could make it dead and foul.
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