Every Longshots player, from age 10 on up, trains with a wood bat. Once players reach the senior division, they stop using metal bats and swing wood exclusively, even if we are competing against teams using metal bats. 

The reasoning is pretty simple; a player who trains with a wood bat becomes a better hitter than one who trains with a metal bat…period. 

Wood bats have a number of disadvantages that make hitting with one more difficult. Wood has a smaller sweet spot than aluminum and/or composite. Wood is less stable and vibrates more at impact. Wood is uniformly dense making it difficult to manipulate its weight distribution vs. metal and composite bats (which are hollow). With hollow bats, more of the weight can be put into the handle making them much easier to control and swing faster.

To us, those disadvantages are what give wood its biggest training advantages.

The smaller sweet spot forces the hitter to develop a swing that brings the barrel into contact with the ball. Hitting this smaller target hones the swing better than swinging a bat with a very large sweet spot. It’s similar to having two archers training for an event. One is practicing by shooting arrows into the side of a barn while the other practices by shooting at a small target bull’s-eye. The one training with the smaller target will develop better accuracy.

The vibration caused by miss-hits using a wood bat will sting sometimes. That is a clear indicator that the swing was less than ideal. In baseball, good things happen when the barrel meets the ball. When a batter swings wood and hits the ball with a different part of the bat, he gets immediate feedback that the swing was not a good one. In almost all cases, the ball does not come off the bat well and the hitter is usually out. By practicing with wood, the feedback from the bat allows hitters to adjust swing to swing and help accelerate swing improvements.

Wood bats are heavier in the barrel, making them more difficult to swing. A 30 ounce metal bat is easier to swing than a 30 oz. wood bat, in part, because of weight distribution. Metal can put more of the overall weight in the handle whereas wood will carry the weight in its thickest part, the barrel. The further the weight is from your hands, the heavier it feels. By practicing with wood, a player builds strength where it matters to a hitter: in the hands, wrists, and forearms. 

We do not want Longshots Baseball to be our players’ ultimate level. We are a developmental step towards their ultimate goal of playing in college and/or beyond. So, in the Senior Division, training includes facing live pitching and competing with a wood bat…playing the games using wood. The fact that swinging wood in games may give our opponents an advantage is not important in the grand scheme of things. We know that our players will have an advantage in their preparation to achieve the next level, even if we lose a few games along the way. Preparing and challenging our players for their next levels is more important.