Bat Rolling
 

My 11 year old son plays travel ball and they are already doing cage work. We use a facility near my house and the boys are all showing off their new bats and prowess. Last night, I received this message, forwarded from the facility through the coach.

Now, I know that it isn't shaving or loading a bat but this is the first time I've seen this done around here. Maybe in other areas of the country it is more popular. It seems to fly in the face of deadening the bats for safety and I wonder if any associations have banned this practice. Have you done this to your bat(s)? Seen it make a difference? Removed bats because they have been altered?

My kid is a pitcher and I hate the idea of a hot bat being employed while he is just 50 feet away. But I recognize that with each rule change coaches will try to find a way around them. Personally, this sounds like a bad idea waiting for something awful to happen all in the name of the long ball. Thoughts?

BBCOR testing actually takes composite bats, rolls them repeatedly until failure, and tests them along the way. If, at any point, they perform over the set limit, they fail. So these bats are "safe", if they're only rolled. You'll see the term ABI, or advanced break in, and that's what this means.

Ah, but the question is, are they considered altered? I've heard both sides of this arguement, but nothing authoritative.

Composite bats have a certain life cycle. They start out like bricks, loosen up over time and use, then go dead. Rolling will get you nearer the end of the cycle, where performance is highest. Also understand that it's that much closer to death.

If you ask any manufacturor, they'll tell you putting your bat in a vise will indeed void the warranty, so these guys are liars. Just on that statement alone, I wouldn't trust them.

1. Coaches trying to get an edge? I'm shocked, shocked!
2. Bat rollers using deceptive advertising? I'm shocked, shocked!

I'd think that taking the "over 500 swings" might actually make you a better player!

Since there's no convenient way to test if a bat has been rolled, i.e. altered from its original design, this bodes badly for the BBCOR initiative. I watched a couple videos online about the process and it looks like if done badly, the bat will have a flat spot - $250 down the drain for Junior. I've tossed bats with flat spots from games before but this coming high school season we won't inspect bats and coaches know it. This should be interesting.

I imagine that if more than one player is swinging the same "HOT" bat, we will be asked to inspect it before the game is over. JMO

Okay, I admit that I spent way too much time looking online for bat rolling online. After a couple hours of looking at vendor sites, YouTube and reading up on the issue, it is pretty clear that detecting it is almost impossible. Basically, the bat rolling machines squeeze the resin that interlocks the composite fibers enough that they weaken. This creates a trampoline effect and a few sites show huge differences in exit speed and restitution. The bat manufacturers know that composite bats break down over time and make their bats 'less hot' when new, so that they will comply after a hundred hits or so. I found a couple associations that have banned composite bats altogether due to how they react when broken in. The new baseball equipment magazines are out and Junior's new toys cost $300 or so. Roll 'em and add another $75, void the warranty and speed up the process of it finally breaking down completely. Nice.

$75.00 just to roll a bat! Hell, you should be able to get one machined and rolled for about that price.

Just hit off a tee. That will break them in faster.

One more thing. Some companies dumbed down their BESR bats to BBCOR by inserting a metal ring, to truss up the insides. Rolling those will probably eff them up, and not produce the desired results.

Again, I don't know if rolled bats are considered altered, or not. I've felt rolled bats before, and you can feel the facets, ever so slight, but they're there.

Me, I'm worried about the end caps being removed. That either means a shaved bat, or one that the ring has been removed. Now that's an altered bat.

If you think rolling a bat isn't altering it you've come under the influence of a mind altering substance.

I dunno about that. A year ago I would have agreed. But since then the new testing technique is rolling 'til death. Thus, proving that rolling doesn't cause the bat to overperform. Hence, rolling should be legal.

Now, I consider rolling to be akin to a pitcher rubbing up a baseball. Just warmin' it up. (well, maybe not warming it up, as some rulesets have wording prohibiting heating up bats).

p.s. I'm only on my first Blue Moon Pale Ale of the evening.

Rich:

I agree with you completely. Especially about rolling mind altering substances, ;).

MTD, Sr.

Fair enough, fellas. How 'bout these other techniques?

Hitting 500 of those hard rubber balls at the cages?

Hitting a "heavy bag" time after time?

Hitting a wooden telephone pole repeatedly?

Backing your car over it, repeatedly?

Don't get me wrong, these are all stupid things to do to a kid's $300 stick. But folks do each of them. And given that it's been proven that rolling doesn't alter the performance characteristics beyond the given threshold, I'm inclined to overlook those rippled bats from now on.

Rolling is cheating, plain and simple. It's altering the bat, now being able to detect a rolled bat is another question all together. Unfortunately, manufactures, coaches and dads, have forgot there's more to baseball than the long ball. Still there's a simple solution, it's called wood. And at $300 a pop, that's a lot of wood bats. Than again, coaches and dad's have forgot or never learned how to hit with wood to begin with.

I realize that the bat standards for baseball and softball are not the same, but here is the new terminology for the bat rule in softball: