Ergonomic Bats

Ergonomic ProXR bat design
Pic Ref. proxr.com

Obviously the biggest story of the week is the steroids scandal that is rocking the reputations of many of the game’s most notable players.  Staying in the theme of baseball, today’s article is a look at how America’s pastime could be changing in a different way, but this time it could be to the safety benefit of the players.

Baseball, much like soccer, is steeped in tradition and sometimes slow to adopt new technology.  Grady Phelan, designer of the ProXR bat, knows this struggle well.  Phelan used physics, research, ingenuity and basic technology to develop and patent a new bat design that could help prevent a common hand injury in baseball.  The design has been approved by MLB and received general approval by players and equipment experts.  However this bat is not widely available and few players have ever used them in a MLB game.  There are many reasons, but first, the design.

Baseball bats are designed with a knob at the base for safety reasons.  Phelan developed a bat with a knob tilted 23 degrees.  The purpose of the tilt is to prevent players from getting a hamate fracture.  Traditional bats (without this tilt) create a situation in which the bat’s knob will potentially rub up against the hamate bone.  This rubbing occurs because players grip the bat at the base (just above the knob) to increase their speed of swing.  A hard swing of the bat, impacting the hamate bone into the knob, can cause a fracture that many times requires surgery and even bone removal.  Fracturing the hamate bone is common in baseball and many players, including Jose Canseco, Ken Griffey, Jr., Jim Thome, Eric Hinske and this year Gordon Beckham, have had the hamate bone removed during their careers.

The pain of the fracture and costly loss of time recovering from surgery makes for a powerful business case for the new bat design.  Moreover, the MLB approved the ProXR and admitted the bat into the Hall of Fame.  This was the first new bat design approved by the MLB since the 1970s.  The design tilts the knob “by 23 degrees (which happens to be the precise range of motion of the human wrist) to work with human anatomy to mitigate hamate impacts by roughly 25%” (ref. fastcodesign.com).

On paper the design offers a compelling story, but players and bat producers are slower to adopt the new design.  Some experts estimate that it would take a day of batting practice to learn how to adjust their swing to the new design.  Since that is not a huge investment of time, tradition and familiarity is what motivates many players to stick with the traditional design.  Many players are very loyal to their bat brand, be it Louisville Slugger or Hillrich & Bradsby.  Bat manufactures are also hesitant to change, though many have provided very positive response to the ProXR design.  Tradition aside, one notable and valid criticism of the bat came from the newly hamate-less Gordon Beckham. As fastcodesign.com put it, “Because the bat is asymmetrical, its margin of grip error is in some ways more like a golf club than a baseball bat. “If you grip the bat, you’ve gotta make sure you grip it exactly the right way,” [Beckham] explained. “If you’re not swinging and hitting the right perfect spot on the barrel, you’re going to have trouble.””

Critics aside, the new design could potentially prevent many injuries.  If introduced early in a young slugger's career, the habit and tradition of gripping the bat would be developed to the design of tilted knob.  However before it can get into those young athletes’ hands, it needs to be manufactured.  Whether any bat manufactures will take a swing at production has yet to be seen. Ref. fastcodesign.com, proxr.com Pic. Ref. proxr.com