Posted by: Al_Oha (p3d0n6@hawaii.rr.com) on Mon Jun 14 19:06:08 2010

If Pujols let the bat lose (bottom hand torque = 0) the instant after ball contact, thus allowing "Whip" to take over, then the bat would fly straight out, tangential to the circle his hands are rotating on and the bat would not magically pull around and head back toward
3rd base or toward the catcher. Since this is clearly not the case, then he must be applying bottom hand torque the instant before contact with the ball too.
> ---

Hi Joe,

There is no question to the issue of torque as Mankin describes. I will refer to the readers to a scientific journal article from January 2009, in the American Journal of Physics. What Mankin and you refer to as torque is quantified as a "couple" in the article:

http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~cross/PUBLICATIONS/44.BatSwing.pdf