Article by brock Gibson
Bat Rolling Becoming a Necessity with new MPH Rules
Anyone who has played with an all-composite bat realizes that composite bats are often not as hot “out of the wrapper” as they are after about 500 to 700 hundred hits have been put on to the bat. This is the main reason that “artificial break-in” techniques are applied to a bat, players want to cut down the time required to get their new bat to its top hitting performance. The amount of improvement in performance varies from bat to bat, but all composite bats tend to improve the more they are hit. This is true despite marketing claims that a particular composite bat is “hot right out of the wrapper”. This fact creates a problem for softball associations who are trying to reduce the on going problem of illegally altered bats because it can sometimes be hard to determine whether the increase in performance is due to the bat having been doctored or just due to its natural break-in process. Some of the associations are placing considerable pressure on manufacturers to manufacture bats that do not increase in performance over time. This is almost an impossibility when it comes to composite type bats. And while some of the processes being made for detecting bats which perform higher than the set mph performance standard may not be able to differentiate between an altered bat and a naturally broken-in bat, the associations’ belief is that if a bat bears a certification stamp then it must perform at or below the performance limit represented by that stamp throughout the bat’s entire life. The ASA did allow a plus or minus variance on the bats but that went away with the 2004 ASA standards and so did those bats (Freak, Synergy 2 etc.,). But now it doesn’t matter how the bat increased in mph performance; any increase in mph performance after the manufacturing of the bat it is not allowed.
An example of how serious associations are taking this issue, the ASA recently changed their bat certification policy. When the ASA certifies a bat as passing its 98-mph Batted-Ball Speed standard, that bat is expected to pass the standard for the life of the bat, even after being broken-in. As of October, 2007 all composite bats are now being artificially broken-in using a bat rolling method before they are sent to the Sports Science Laboratory at Washington State University to be mph performance tested for certification. I’m not exactly sure what it means for the future of ASA softball, or for the future of composite bats, but at the end of January, 2008, only one composite bat (including all 2007-2008 composite bat models that had previously been certified “out of the wrapper”) has passed the 98-mph ASA certification test after being broken in by rolling. The ASA is rumored to be changing its
