The Axe Bat has started to be widely used in the baseball world. With its new handle, many believe that the bat actually can change your swing for the better. With the likes of Mookie Betts, George Springer, and Kris Bryant all making the change, I decided that I wanted to investigate whether or not this bat can help players become better, but first I will show you what it is.
The reason this bat has caught the attention of many is the oddly shaped handle on it. It appears as the name describes it, very axe-like. You can see it here:
According to Axe Bat, the handle helps the overall biomechanics of a swing and makes it more natural, leading to better bat control and speed. Let’s test to see whether this is true or not.
Using my Blast bat sensor, I took 30 swings, first using the normal bat and then using the Axe Bat. From what Axe Bat is supposed to do, we should expect to see a rise in bat speed as well as peak hand speed. If this would happen, this would show what Axe Bat is saying is true as the bat speed will be harder and so will the hand speed due to more control. The results are shown below:
From my testing, what Axe Bat is saying about their product is true. My bat speed went up 3.19 mph and my peak hand speed also went up by 1.28 mph. The swing efficiency (bat speed / peak hand speed) went down, but not by a huge number, showing that my swing stayed about the same on each bat. My attack angle did go up by ~2, but it still is in a good spot to stay in line with the ball path. The vertical bat angle also doesn’t change too much, showing that the pitches were pretty consistent throughout the testing.
However, after looking through the results of each individual swing, I saw that there was more variance in the normal bat swings than the Axe bats. The normal bats had a standard deviation of 3.0324 in bat speed and the Axe bats had a 2.0121. This could hold the numbers down for the normal bat and could be the reason for losing in the categories. To solve this, I decided to take the top 20% of swings (or top 6) in bat speed and then averaged the stats out. By doing this, the standard deviations came to just about the same, with 0.9395 for the normal bat and a 0.9397 for the Axe. The new results are shown here:
The Axe Bat still ends up winning in the same categories, but their wins aren’t as extreme as initially thought. The two important numbers, bat speed and peak hand speed, lose their edge a bit and drop down to 1.78 mph and 0.99 mph in difference, respectively. But, they still have a lead and it shows that Axe Bat does actually give hitters an edge to their overall swing speed when using it. The swing efficiency and attack angle differences stay about the same, showing that the swings stay about the same as before with each bat. The vertical bat angle does go up by a degree for the Axe Bat, showing that pitches may have been just a tad bit higher for the it compared to the normal one. Overall, the Axe Bat is better than a normal bat.
One thing that I will say about this test is that I was the only one who performed it. The results could’ve possibly changed with a higher sample size or more people who took part in the experiment, but with quarantine it is not possible at the moment to get more in on it. I could possibly redo this test in the future with more people being able to take part. From doing this myself, however, the results I got do match up with what Axe Bat states and therefore, I think it would hold up with those changes.
As the Axe Bat gains more popularity among baseball players and coaches, we could see a trend in the bat market as companies may try to find the next best thing for handles and the overall bat. Easton used to have their Mako Torq handle that was supposed to do a similar thing but has since been discontinued. They are a company who could possibly try to innovate, and since they have done it in the past, why couldn’t they do it again? Just like the race for technologies such as Rapsodo, Trackman, and Edgertronic in MLB, there could be a race between bat companies on who can make the best handle.
Blast Sensor used for testing and data
Swing Efficiency is from Driveline Baseball
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