Posted by: Chris O'Leary (chris@chrisoleary.com) on Thu Jan 25 08:08:12 2007

"If the bigger barrel bat is roughly the same weight, go with the bigger barrel. Much like switching from the old smaller wooden tennis rackets to bigger surface metal rackets, the bigger barrel gives a lot of hitters more contact/confidence. But the key is to find a bat that the hitter can swing well and is comfortable with."

The problem with a big barrel bat is that it will typically have a higher swing weight than a comparable standard barrel bat (because more of the mass of the bat is in the barrel rather than closer to the handle).

While some people find that that helps their swing, others are not strong enough to handle the added swing weight and end up losing bat speed.