Softball Players--a bat question

In My Humble Opinion
1

I had been using a borrowed Easton Z-core in seasons past. This year, I am forced to buy my own bat. Our league’s banned bat list includes composites and multi-walled bats. I popped $30 for an Easton Cyclone. $30 is dirt cheap in a league where players routinely catalogue order $200+ bats, and never let anyone else use them (stingy bastards…).

I am looking for reviews, if anyone has used this bat before. It’s a 34", 30 oz. bat. I would have preferred a little heavier (32-33 oz would have been ideal), but that’s all they had.

Did I get a decent bat?

2

Maybe a Saturday afternoon was a poor time to post this question. Sunday afternoon may not be much better, but I’ll try…

3

Sorry, I don’t have any specific experience with this bat. But, most of the guys on my teams have their own bats so I’ll see if anyone has one.

I can give a little advice on bats in general based on what I’ve picked up playing for some fairly decent teams.

First of all, there really is a significant difference between the low end bats and the high end bats. The high end bats have much more pop, and they can help even little guys hit some serious bombs. There is really no comparison between a $200 bat and a $30 bat. That being said, there are guys out there who can hit bombs with a $200 bat, a $30 bat, any bat for that matter, or anything else they can hit with.

But, it probably depends what kind of hits you are going for as well. If you are a singles hitter, and trying to just hit line drives over the infield, probably any bat will do. You would be able to hit the ball harder with a nice bat, but you will be able to hit it hard enough with any bat. Bombs on the other hand, come a lot easier with the nice bats.

As far the bat weight, it seems like this philosophy has changed significantly in the past years. From what I hear about the “old days” (70’s and 80’s), the thinking was that more weight = more power. This has changed in most cases, and now most the power hitters I talk to go for bat speed. These guys typically use 26 oz. bats and hit consistent monster homers. I have a 28 oz. bat myself (but I’m far from a home run hiter), and I haven’t seen anything over 30 oz. among the bats of any of my teammates.

Regarding your teammates not letting others use their bats, that isn’t really out of line. If you have a whole team using a bat, it will almost surely use its pop by the end of the season, if not before. It seems like a selfish move to not share their bats with others, but there is a legit reason behind it.

I will ask around this week at my games and see if anyone has hit an Easton Cyclone. If so, I’ll post back here.

4

Well, in my experience, I like the lighter bats, but not the ultra-light nonsense which is somewhat popular today. 30oz works for me, but ymmv.

Yeah, in the old days, back in the 20s and 30s, heavier bats were the norm, and I’m not sure what the babe would do with a 28oz high-bat-speed thing handled bat of today. When the modern, lightweight high-speed bats started showing up in the 70s and 80s, you started seeing atypical home-run hitters like rickey, cal, and a-rod.

Since the original post was about softball, and I’ve played a bit of softball, I would hazard to say that lifting a few weights and laying off the french fries would do a fair bit more good for most adult softball players than spending 300 dollars on a bat would.