A development to watch in major league baseball is maple bats. Fans and media have been talking about maple bats breaking during games. Pointed projectiles pose a danger to players and fans.
Commissioner Bud Selig said earlier this month he will be investigating whether maple bats are breaking more frequently than ash bats and if they pose a safety threat. There’s mixed opinion about what’s going on.
In an article earlier this month, a California newspaper, the Modesto Bee, said maple bats are becoming a problem in all of professional baseball. The newspaper’s Web site, www.modbee.com, said: “To put it simply, traditional ash bats crack. Maple bats explode, and over the last six years, maple has become the preferred wood of major league baseball. Just last year, it surpassed ash for the first time, according to MLB.com, and this season 60 percent of all major leaguers are swinging maple.”
Maple bats are believed to have a harder hitting surface than the more traditional ash bats, but the view by many is that they break more frequently and explosively. Earlier this year, for example, a Pittsburgh Pirates coach was struck in the face by a broken maple bat.
Home run king Barry Bonds had success with maple bats and players are copy cats looking for their own edge. “To me any advantage I could gain by the bat being a little harder, I need the help,” said Twins third baseman Mike Lamb who is a lifetime .278 hitter but is currently at .222. “I need the help. It probably isn’t even true. …But the perception for me anyway is that it helps.”
Lamb, who has been using maple bats for the last several seasons, guessed that more Twins use maple rather than ash bats. He said he doesn’t know if maple bats break more frequently but said “when barrels are big and handles are small, that doesn’t help either.”
Conjecture about changes includes regulating thicker maple bat handles and even banning them.