Talk:Corked bat

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What's this I hear about quarked bats? Of course baseball bats have quarks-- they're matter! Do they expect the players to use massless bats made only of leptons? This wouldn't be happening if Major League baseball employed some real scientists--

Emily, they're talking about corked bats, not quarked bats.

Oh! That's very different. Never mind.

On a more serious note, why is using a corked bat (or pine tar) an advantage? What's the physical explanation? Details?

Supposedly, a corked bat is supposed to have more give than a regular bat. Most of the time, though, it gives too much, and breaks, leading the player to get caught.

Bad physics

The benefits of a corked bat described here must be slightly wrong. I wouldn't want to argue whether a corked bat makes the ball travel further or not (I don't play baseball and this sounds like the sort of thing players have debated for years). However the phrase;

As a result, the ball may travel faster, reducing the likelihood of the ball being caught by a defender. However, since the bat is lighter, the ball does not necessarily travel as far as with a heavier bat, but usually only by a few feet at most.

has to be wrong. If the hit ball travels faster, it will go further - assuming the same range of angles leaving the bat.

From ballistics, once the ball has left the bat, the only things that can affect the distance travelled are

the speed of the ball
the initial angle of elevation (45° from ground is best)
spin of the ball - much smaller effect but can influence stability of flight, drag and even lift.

I suspect the real issue is that the lighter bat is faster to swing, helping reaction times and improving the odds of connecting with the ball. However, it carries less momentum so doesn't necessarily transfer as much energy to the ball. The ball would then be moving slower and travel less far.

On the other hand it is also possible that the lighter bat can be swung sufficiently fast that it compensates for its lower mass and does carry more momentum when it strikes the ball. In which case the ball will be faster, harder to catch and travel further.

Either way the issue is about how fast the bat moves.

More complex secondary effects would come in if the corked bat deforms more on contact or otherwise absorbs energy during the strike. These would mostly imply the ball moves slower. -- Solipsist 07:39, 9 Sep 2004 (UTC)

I think Solipsist is absolutely right. This article should be corrected. -- BTW, I think the possible advantage of a corked bat depends a lot on the pitcher's physical condition: If he is heavy then a lighter bat won't help him to get more momentum; the mass of his arms and upper body will set the limit. A lighter pitcher might benefit from a lighter bat, which will allow him to put more drive (= speed) into his pitch, at the same energy. Given that the ball's mass is much less than the bat's the latter is not decelerated a lot when hitting the ball, nearly regardless of the mass ratio. -- Please excuse my broken English. -- Umberto

User:Furrykef has now deleted the phrase that the ball travels faster. Just to clarify, I was suggesting that either a) the ball travels faster and further, or b) the ball travels slower and less far, but that c) the ball travels faster and less far wasn't an option. Since I don't know whether a) or b) is true, I couldn't make the correction.

It may be possible for a corked bat to carry more momentum if the batter can swing it faster to compensate for the lack of weight, but as Umberto says this is not so likely. So, I suspect User:Furrykef is right and the trade off is that a lighter, corked bat, carries less momentum, so the ball travels slightly slower and less far, but the batter has better control and is able to connect more often. -- Solipsist 11:04, 19 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Larger Sweet Spot?

A corked bat is effectively perimeter-weighted. Perimeter weighting is great in golf and tennis as it increases the sweet spot. Any evidence that corking a bat increases its sweet spot?

Cork is an elastic material

The hitter's advantage through use of a corked bat comes from the fact that cork is an elastic material which transfers additional energy into a batted ball (thus causing it to fly faster & farther). The original premise that cork is used to reduce the bat's weight is ridiculous (Major League Baseball permits the use of bats without any minimum weight so long as they conform to other specific physical dimensions, and professional players use bats comprising a wide range of different weights; see [section 1.10] of MLB's Official Rules). Mike 07:21, 30 December 2006 (UTC)[reply]