quote:

Originally posted by qwagswaggar:
It's astonishing that they missed this detail; it has been discussed here explicitly many, many times, and more often than not has been mentioned as the sole reason for corking.

They didn't miss this detail. They dismissed it. They recognized that a lighter bat would allow for a faster swing before they did any testing. But, their reasoning was that anyone can just get a lighter type of wood. MLB only requires that bats be made of one solid piece of wood, whether that is ash, hickory, maple, or bamboo, they could care less.

IMO, despite keeping the velocity the same, I think they did succeed in showing that 'corking' a bat with cork in the sweet spot is a bad idea. Superballs or maybe a chunk of aluminum in the sweet spot might be interesting though.

I agree with boom20. The bats should not be corked on the sweet spot because Major league players never put cork there and they also use different materials. I saw 1 time a bat burst open and about 7 superballs bounced out so they should try different things to cork it with.

Also they used Jamie's 60 mph swing insted of a major league players which is in the 80s or 90s. They should have had an MLB player swing a corked bat and a regualar bat to see the difference in speed.

Lastly they should make the bat be swinging instead of just staying in 1 spot like a bunt. This myth needs a revisit as soon as they can do it

I always think corked bats are overrated. There never has been proven a corked bat makes a ball fly farther. It is just suspicious thought like the helium football. Both are in the same principle. The ball flies because the energy transferred to the ball when it and the bat collides. A heavier bat would create more energy. True, a corked bat would be lighter and swung faster but I do not believe the increased velocity would justly compensate for the loss of weight.

Here's a good article. It covers it all. Bat speed, density, super balls, etc. Corked bats do not cause the ball to fly farther.

http://www.kettering.edu/~drussell/bats-new/corkedbat.html

I watched this episode for the first time recently. Did anyone else notice that the balls hit off of the corked bat flew much straighter than the balls hit from the control? This might help explain the reasoning behind this myth better.

My grandfather had told me about corked bats when I was kid and he had said that balls hit off of corked bats flew farther. Since they showed that the speed of the ball leaving the bat was actually cut in half, perhaps the advantage is that all of the kinetic energy is better reflected by the bat with cork in it.

After all, what good is a ball that flies foul? Most golfers would prefer a driver that always hit balls 200 yards in the right direction than to one that hits 400 yards but slices or hooks every time.