Players who find themselves moving up in the baseball world will have to transition from using aluminum bats to wood bats. I’m curious as to how hard the transition is. Does it take days/weeks/months to get comfortable with using a wood bat?
The key word there is ‘comfortable’. IANA professional baseball player. I think players who have never used a wooden bat can use one effectively with a few practice swings, but not most effectively. If they had to, a player moving to the pros from maybe college could get close to a 100% comfort level just during spring training, not even that long for players who have developed serious bat control already.
If a player could get that far in the game maybe it’s possible now they’ve never used a wooden bat at the plate but they’ve probably held one in their hands and taken some swings. The skills for wooden bats don’t interfere with those for metal, it’s just an additional skill level to add to a batter’s repertoire. How many at bats taken with the new bat is the most direct measure of how long this takes.
Are aluminum bats still used in league play? The last time I lived in an area with a youth league, that league had banned aluminum bats.
The high school league where I grew up tried banning wood bats for a few years after a pitcher nearly died when a ball hit him in (I think) the head, but eventually switched back. There are restrictions on how “effective” a metal bat can be; in fact, the NCAA requires that all bats be tested at the beginning of each series in Division I. Metal bats aren’t that dangerous, and they are more cost-effective than wood ones.
This isn’t correct. The exit velocities off of aluminum bats is significantly higher than wooden bats - they are far more dangerous. They’re still around because they’re less expensive and don’t splinter.
In Australia we have a local league, that occasionally attracts American players who still have some ambitions at making the major leagues. In the 1990s, when baseball had a minor boom down here, we sometimes got sometimes highly-rated prospects - I suppose they could hasten their development by playing through the american winter.
Anyway, aluminium bats were used in the Australian league, but the visting US players always used wooden ones if they still had major league ambitions.
They’re also just more easily swung by less talented players, because they’re lighter.
The transition to wooden bats is done pretty early in a prospect’s career, often while they’re still in college or high school; advanced leagues often use wooden bats. (The famed Savannah Bananas play in a summer college league, a league specifically for high quality college players to continue playing after the school year ends; it uses wood bats.) Any prospect who… well, who has any prospects… will seek out wood bat practice and playing time pretty early on.
It’s a very significant transition. Wooden bats aren’t just heavier relative to size; they have a smaller “Sweet spot,” so they are far less forgiving.
I’m having a hard time imaging aluminum bats in the big leagues. Pitchers would have to wear more armor than the batters. Batters now avoid hitting back to the pitcher because it’s likely to turn into an out. With the aluminum bats the tides could turn where batters intentionally aim for the pitchers who won’t have time to react.
All this of course because any change to the game immediately leads to the worst possible outcome. I’m still mad about the one hop out rule being eliminated back in '64.
Yeah, 1864 is when I gave up on baseball too! 
I can imagine it. People would die.