It started being noticed in the 2008 major league baseball season – a rash of baseball bats explosively breaking – injuring players, officials and fans. And where did Major Leage Baseball go to try and find answers on why those bats were breaking…..Madison, WI and the USDA Forest Products Laboratory. 

David Kretschmann, research engineer at USDA's Forest Products Laboratory in Madison says that he and his team have succeeded in helping to cut the number of dangerous broken bat incidents. After sorting through thousands of broken bats — including nearly every bat that broke in the second half of the 2008 season — Kretschmann and colleagues at Harvard and the University of Massachusetts Lowell identified issues that made bats more prone to shattering.
 

Kretschmann said that some of the bat breakage in 2008 was connected to a change in bat manufacturing that leaned toward maple wood - as opposed to hard ash bats. He says research showed that bats made of particularly low-density varieties of maple instead of ash are more prone to multiple-piece failures (the phrase Kretschmann uses to describe a bat break). Kretschmann also said the preference hitters have for bats with thin handles that flare into thick barrels is another issue to be dealt with.

 

"Bats are going to break."  Kretschmann says, "People pitch inside and batters reach for for those outside pitches and that's an extreme case for a bat - they're going to break.  Our goal has been to try and reduce the number of multiple-piece failures which is the safety hazard part of it.  We've been able to cut it in half."

Because of recommendations by Kretschmann and his fellow forestry researchers - the bat making manufacturers are now under closer scrutiny and can even be fined if they don't monitor things like "slope of grain" in the wood they're using. "There has been a distinct effort now to have a level playing field for all manufacturers to produce them according to a standarized grading process," Krestchmann explains, "Having a third party inspection to go in and try to improve the quality going out on the field has had a distinct and noticeable difference on the number of bats breaking."
 

Kretschmann says their lab gets all the broken bat video that shows the pitch - all of which are reviewed and categorized, looking for just where the pitch was placed and what manufacturer made the bat.  He says they do it for every game of every major league game.  Do they have work to do - yes.