<<Any case, corked bats don’t add anything to your hits, maybe a foot or two at the very most. It’s just a myth that they do. So neither his records nor his ability to hit a ball really, really far should be in doubt. >>
Well I could be wrong, but he’s getting older, and his bat speed is going down. Wouldn’t corking the bat help his swing? The advantage isn’t just the extra feet the ball goes, it is that he made contact with the ball at all…or foul it off?
*Originally posted by Manduck *
I think you’re right on target here. Especially since Sammy breaks a large number of bats and none of them have shown evidence of corking before. He probably wasn’t trying to gain power, but instead manuverability, by using the corked, more agile bat.
I beg to differ on the interpretation that the other bats not being corked makes it better of Sammy. It strikes me that it actually works against his “excuse” (which, from every baseball player I’ve heard from is complete and utter bullshit) that it was a mistake. Of 76 bats, he just “happened” to “accidentally” pick up the corked one. And, if you check the tapes of the games he played prior to betting busted, it appears he was using the corked bat since his return. I don’t buy, for one second, that he went up there not knowing the bat was corked.
What I head - have not seen the tapes - is that when he returned he was using a regular ash bat, with which he proceeded to really stink, whiffing 8 times in 2 games. He then switched to the corked bat and improved his hitting.
In terms of physics, perhaps, but how much of a difference does a two hundredth of a second make in human terms? Is that really that much extra time to judge the pitch and decide whether or not to swing? That’s the difference of which I’m sceptical.
hansel, the difference is clearly significant in terms of your ability to make contact with the ball. Both ball and bat travel, in terms of the size of the hitting area, a very significant distance in .005 of a second. If my math is correct a major league pitch travels seven to nine inches in .005 seconds, a few inches of which are vertical or lateral. Eight inches is obviously a huge amount in terms of bat hitting ball; if the bat is eight inches from where it should be you’ve missed by a wide margin. And bear in mind that this is speed you’re gaining or losing almost entirely AFTER you’ve made the decision to swing or take - so there’s even less room for error than you think.
Bat speed is critically important in high level baseball. .005 seconds is a big chunk of bat speed.