[91bananas]

FWIW they already for the most part do have bats tailored to what they like to feel in their swings as far as where weight is, where the barrel begins, what shape it is, what the grip/knob feels like. I can't say how much data goes in to deciding what is used vs what they like to feel, this feels like more of a renaissance in attempting to use data somewhere else than brilliance in design.

My intuition tells me this whole thing is stupid and a fad, sure you might get slightly more mass behind the ball on perfectly barreled swings, but you get so few of those on the year already, were they already home runs of XBH on the old bat? And what are we losing on mishits with the skinny end of barrel, since after all hitting is more than just perfect swings caught in the right spot. Seems like more of a push towards feast or famine, 3 outcome baseball, which I personally just ain't a fan of.

[dylan604]

That would be an interesting Show HN. A camera(s) setup with something like OpenCV and some ML processing to analyze a batter's swing, find their best bat shape, then use some sort of automated lathe to cut their bat based on the findings. Lather, rinse, repeat until you've iterated through to the "perfect" bat for that hitter.

[jagged-chisel]

It wouldn’t take long to have a tight selection of bats for every player to try and based on each swing, the system can predict the best bat.

[dylan604]

Yeah, but that's not a very HN way of doing it though. Bring in the AI, then add some crypto, and the code must be written in Rust. If there's a UI, then Next/React must be used to re-write the existing HTML/CSS only version, because that's just not even trying. Oh, and it needs to be done over a weekend

[domoregood]

this

[relwin]

You would increase bat speed (of your swing) by moving mass from the end towards your hands. Notice most regular bats have an "ice cream" scoop on the end, lightening it slightly.

[psunavy03]

The placebo effect is absolutely a thing. Players still get in trouble for corking bats even though it's been proven to have no effect (or a negative one) on hitting.