Posted by: THG () on Fri May 9 11:48:30 2008

> Please help...I am really confused by bat barrel size. Why would you not want your child to hit with a smaller barrel at an early age? My son is 8 and uses a 2 1/4 bat (29/17...he is 4'6/88lbs) even though most of the kids on his team use 2 3/4. I purchased the bat thinking that it was a requirement in his leage but I must be wrong because all of the kids on his team are swinging the 3/4. I don't know what my son's batting average is but I know that he has not K'd all year and I could count on one hand how many times he has hit into an out.
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> I am a football coach so I don't know much about baseball other than what I have learned on sites like this along with my little league experience. However, it seems to make sense to me that learning to hit the sweet spot with a smaller barrel would make them that much better when they move to a bigger barrel. Am I way off base or should I look at getting my kid into a larger barrel?


Coachld. What works for your kid works for him and that is good. But look at it this way: People used to use smaller wooden tennis rackets. Now they use the wide aluminum rackets. But for some reason which is at least part psychological, people hit much better with the bigger rackets. Granted more off centered hits would be a benefit to a bigger racket from a contact standpoint, thogh it would not seem to make the difference it does. But it does seem to be such a benefit.