One Or Two Piece Baseball Bat?

One Or Two Piece Baseball Bat?

By R. Nelson

It used to be simple; a bat was one piece of wood, aluminum or composite. How things have changed! Two-piece bats are now extremely popular and seem to be the trend for the foreseeable future.

Easton, Demarini and Nike have long championed the two-piece design. Demarini and Nike have held fast to this philosophy while Easton has branched out to make bats in almost all designs in an effort to appeal to everyone. They say the major benefit of a two piece bat is that it gives more flex to the barrel at the point of contact and, therefore, increases the trampoline effect. This should not be confused with handle flex (or whip action). Handle flex or whip action is supposed to take place before the point of contact with the ball, and the trampoline effect at the point of contact.

The one-piece bat argument long championed by Louisville and recently COMbat. Louisville claims their Triton and H2 are "bonded" together to act more like a true one-piece bat. They say the two-piece design results in weakness at the joint of the handle and barrel thereby reducing the trampoline effect or spring back. They're essentially saying that it provides very little resistance and therefore will not spring back as quick and hard as a one-piece design.

Before we go any farther, let's understand what trample effect actual means in the scientific world. The trampoline effect refers to pronounced elasticity in the impacting object (baseball bat, tennis racquet, golf club, etc.) such that it acts like a trampoline. It is also referred to as the spring-like effect because of the degree to which the object depresses, then springs back into shape when striking a ball. Here are the scientific specifics for a baseball bat:


The trampoline effect in baseball refers to the elasticity of a bat upon impact with a baseball.
When a ball hits a wood bat, it compresses to nearly half its original diameter, losing up to 75% of its initial energy to internal friction forces.
However, in a hollow bat such as an aluminum or composite bat, the bat barrel compresses somewhat like a spring. This means that the ball is not compressed as much and loses less energy to internal friction forces.
Furthermore, most of the energy temporarily stored in the bat is returned to the ball in an aluminum or composite bat. The energy which is lost in the bat compression is much smaller than that lost without compression.
So there is absolutely no doubt that the barrel flexes during contact and does create a trampoline effect. The real question is does a two-piece bat create more, less or the same barrel flex/trampoline effect than a one-piece bat made from the same material? And if so, does this increase batted-ball speed?

This is where the science gets murky because there doesn't seem to be any scientific data supporting or debunking claims that a two-piece bat produces more trampoline effect than a one-piece bat (or vice versa). Will someone please call Mythbusters!

So what I've done is try to look at this logically. My conclusion is that a two-piece bat probably increases the trampoline effect due to its hinge at the connection point. But, the increase is probably negligible and therefore won't make much of a difference. I've also look at what the top players are using to see if there is a preference. Most players on college baseball teams swinging Easton bats overwhelmingly choose the two-piece bats to their one-piece siblings. They'll usually choose the Stealth Speed over the Synergy Speed and the SV12 over the V12. They also tend to choose the stiff handle design of those bats. In the end, you're fine with either a one or two-piece bat as I believe they are extremely close in performance.

First decide what you want to spend, the material that's best for you, whether you prefer an end-loaded or balanced bat, a one or two-piece model and then the handle design.

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