Composite Bats

Composite vs Aluminum alloy bats, which is better?

There is a lot of debate as to which is better, composite or aluminum alloy bats. Here I throw in my 2 cents worth.

A note on composite bats vs. aluminum bats: As far as performance is concerned, my opinion is that nowadays there really isn't much of a difference. It’s now becoming very common for the leagues to limit the performance of the bats allowed to be used. This is because composite bats can be made with such high performance that they can be dangerous to use, so their performance is purposely being limited by the leagues. The result of this is that all of the bat manufacturers make bats that meet the maximum performance as set forth by each league, and the aluminum alloys used these days are strong enough that the bats can be made with a thin enough wall to easily meet these performances. For example, Little League rules prohibit the use of any bat that has a Bat Performance Factor (BPF) of 1.15 or less. For USSSA and NSA league play the bat must bear a permanent marking indicating that the bat does not exceed a 1.20 BPF rating.

The main advantage of composite bats over aluminum bats is that composite bats can be made with a larger "sweet spot" than aluminum bats, allowing more forgiveness for an imperfect swing. Also composite bats can be made to feel much better than aluminum bats and to have a better sound when hitting the ball. This has a fairly large psychological advantage over the aluminum bats. In my opinion, these advantages account for the high popularity of composite bats. There is still some perceived improvement in performance of the composite bats as the ratings have been determined with bats that weren’t broken in yet, so that their performance would improve once they were broken in. However, even that is changing now. For a more indepth (and technical) discussion on composite and aluminum bats, see Dr. Daniel Russell's website Physics and Acoustics of Baseball and Softball Bats.

Concerning breaking in the bat, composite bat require a longer break-in period than aluminum bats to get the best performance out of them. Just remember, do NOT break it in by hitting balls at a commercial batting cage. These balls are too dense for composite bats and will result in a cracked bat! Use regulation leather-covered baseballs to break-in your bat.

So, my opinion on the composite vs. aluminum debate is that composite bats are still better than aluminum bats. Whether or not it's enough better to justify the high cost is up to you!

Where are the best places to get bats? I've found the following online sellers to be excellent: Baseball Rampage, Baseball Express, and Sports Diamond. To make it easier to find the right bat, we've set up some bat product pages from my best sources that let you view bats by length-to-weight ratio. Just follow the link and click the length-to-weight ratio you want! Also, since bats are usually categorized by length-to-weight ratio, it can be difficult to find bats that are shorter than 28". For this reason, we've put together product pages for 27" bats, and for 24-26" bats which are considered Tee Ball bats.