Louisville has finally responded to Easton and Demarini’s multi-piece bat designs with the Louisville Slugger TPX Triton, a unique 3 piece bat. What I find amazing about this bat is the size of the barrel. This is the largest barrel I’ve ever seen on a baseball bat. My initial thought is this thing looks like an oak tree!
The composite baseball bat is here to stay, so know them, live them and love them.
Stronger and lighter than high-grade aluminum, they are either made of a graphite-fiber composite material or have an aluminum core with graphite lining.
The main advantage is it’s lighter than aluminum and hence provides for a larger barrel and sweet spot within the designated drop ratio. They give a whole lot more forgiveness for the imperfect swing, and have the potential to make the average hitter a clean-up hitter.
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So what is a hybrid baseball batand why would I want to buy one? These baseball bats are a combination of composite and alloy material. The handle is composite and the barrel is alloy.
Examples of include:
The lighter composite handle allows the alloy barrel to be made longer than a traditional 100% alloy bat. This increases the “sweet spot” compared to an alloy bat and provides more leeway to the batter. In contrast, a 100% composite bat has both a composite handle and barrel making the barrel, and “sweet spot”, even larger. Continue reading →
When purchasing a baseball bat the first step you need too understand is the material. This is an in-depth article on composite vs. aluminum bats.
Composite material baseball and softball bats have been around for quite a while, but only in the last few years have they begun to seriously compete with aluminum bats. As far back as 1985, graphite and plastic bats were available[1,2] and by the late 1980’s each of the three big bat companies – Easton, Worth, and Louisville Slugger – had graphite bats on the market. These early bats were advertised as “having the strength of aluminum and the performance of wood.” They were very strong and held up to a lot of abuse, but because they did not perform nearly as well as the more popular aluminum single-walled bats then available they did not remain on the market very long. For about 10 years graphite bats pretty much disappeared from the scene, but by the late 1990’s a few small bat companies – most noticeably Miken – were reintroducing carbon fiber, or composite material, bats into the market again. Like their predecessors, these composite bats were pretty durable, but not very high performing. Continue reading →