tell-tale signs that a kid's bat is too light

[BamaYankee]

Can you tell from the swing-- or the result?

[pcarnette]

I don't have any definitive signs, but I would suspect that a swing that is shoulder versus hip-initiated could be one. My son is having this problem and lunging too. He has a -12 and a -11 bat. I'm wondering if he has gotten stronger than I've given him credit for. He's approx. 4' 7", 64lbs.

Anyway, I think lunging is more of a timing problem than a too light of a bat problem, but I plan to move him up to a heavier bat in the summer to get his hips engaged more. Would it be worth trying a heavier bat to see if it helped curtail lunging?

[BamaYankee]

Double post

[BamaYankee]

Would it be worth trying a heavier bat to see if it helped curtail lunging?

That depends. How does he hit in the cage or with you at BP? If he is hitting there, I don't know if a heavier bat will fix lunging. It might fix someone who is over-swinging.

[pcarnette]

It would seem that the closer the pitching distance, the better he hits. So I think you're right. It's a timing issue and a matter of not trusting his hands. It also seems like the faster the pitch, the better he hits because he has less time to lung and get in his own way.

[skipper5]

A bat that's too heavy can impair or destroy any batter's timing.
Extreme example: I bet Babe Ruth himself couldn't time LL pitching if he swung a 200 ounce end-loaded bat.

But most batters can successfully adjust their timing when using a bat that's "too light".
Extreme example: My sons and their friends on their summer teams played a lot of backyard fast-pitch wiffleball, during the baseball season. They had zero problems adjusting to using feather-weight wiffle-ball bats.

Ultra-light bats may impair swing-development.
They may impair batted-ball speed.
But they're falsely accused of impairing swing-timing.

[Coach C]

I've errored on the light side. I agree with Skip that they can adjust timing. Currently my son started the season with a -8 and half way through he's pulling everthing from both sides. So the results tell me he's ready for a -5. But a little voice is telling me an endloaded -5 might need to wait for fall ball.

[bbrages]

Rolling of the wrists over too early can, IMO, be the result of a hyper-light bat.

[BamaYankee]

My boy swung a small barrel -9 (30") last two seasons. This year he moved up to 11-12s, big barrel, 50' mounds. I bought him a 31" -10. Second guessing myself now. I have always been in the "swing as heavy as they can" school of thought, but moving up to this age group I thought it might help with faster pitching.

[UAME]

For me, finding a bat that is too light is akin to finding a girlfriend that is too pretty: there are some downsides, but it takes a long time for them to become unbearable.

In other words, I would always err on the side of being too light. I think problems would be more evident in performance at contact: vibration/sting, etc. Even then, I'm not sure you can say it's the lack of weight that causes the problem, but rather the construction of the bat to achieve that lighter weight (more severe taper, smaller sweet spot, etc.)

[skipper5]

Rolling of the wrists over too early can, IMO, be the result of a hyper-light bat.

This makes sense on the face of it.
But it's contradicted by the experience of my sons and their friends, who played backyard wiffleball during baseball season, using wiffle bats (contact area wrapped in duct tape)--extremely light bats, and in my highly subjective judgment, and murky memory, there were VERY few rollovers. Lots of uppercut homers into the woods or swimming pool, depending on the venue.

Possibly, a high incidence of rolling over might correlate with the use of ultra-light bats (e.g, minus 12) because the least competent batters tend to use them.

[Roothog66]

What a light bat does do, however, is allow kids to acheive an acceptable level of success with bad mechanics. It doesn't directly cause the bad mechanics, but doesn't force the player to correct mechanics. Why get your hips into the swing when you can hit just fine by throwing your arms out there. Then when they get to high school and -3's they don't understand why they can't hit anymore. IMO, a heavier bat FORCES kids to either develop correct mechanics or fail.