WebBall.com - RockBats

When we first came across the story of Roland Hernandez and Rock Bats, it was overwhelming. His level of knowledge about wood is amazing. Some of his innovations are radical - to say the least. And in the Rock Bats all-wood composite he has added to the story with a different approach for stability and performance. - Richard Todd, WebBall

The new science in all-wood composite bats

Composites from Rock Bats feature a maple shell with a combination of wood cores plus other wood-science innovations.

Among the innovations:

Composite combination of special core woods inside a solid rock maple turning.
Sweet spot evaluated and ID'd on each every bat.
Face Oriented Contact - a RockBats innovation based on performance testing.

For the full story behind RockBats, see below. To order...

True innovation in wood bat performance

The story of RockBats begins with wood science. In fact, the company's founder, Roland Hernandez, had been a researcher at the USDA Forest Products Laboratory for over 17 years - he knows his wood. Before starting Rock Bats, he was already supplying maple billets to other bat makers for their pro brands. Beyond that, from his research and experience, he knew there was even more to it than simply the type of wood - it was about wood properties and optimum characteristics.

Do you need to know all the details to pick a bat? No. But when someone asks you why you swing a Rock Bat, you'll have an answer for them.

What makes a bat perform better...
1 Face Grain Contact

Past research had reported that wood toughness is approximately 20% to 30% higher for impact on the FACE-grain, compared to impact on the EDGE-grain. This was for several wood species. RockBats conducted an in-house study specifically for Hard Maple and found that FACE-grain contact was approximately 18% stronger than EDGE-grain contact.
The result: Since 2006 RockBats FORCE Technology^TM has labeled their maple bats to encourage contact on the crown surface, "the face", rather than the edge grain (still common with maple, and still recommended for ash.) It's a labeling change now required for all maple bat makers who supply the MLB.

2 Breakage Factors

The primary reason bats break into 2 pieces has to do with grain angle - when the slope of grain exceeds a certain angle it will break. The result: a decision to mark all bats with an inkspot which can reveal the slope of grain, now required for MLB use. In fact, RockBats has decided to meet all 2009 bat standards for straight slope-of-grain shown by the ink spot on the handle.

3 The Sweet Spot

RockBats tests every bat and identifies the Sweet Spot on the barrel. They don't have to, but no two pieces of wood are alike, therefore, no two solid-wood bats are alike. Bats having the same shape and weight can still have different Sweet Spot locations. So each bat is tested to determine the sweet spot, and that location is identified on the barrel with RockBats diamond-shaped sweet spot sticker. As far as WebBall can determine, RockBats is the ONLY manufacturer that identifies the Sweet Spot.

These are just 3 of the scientific factors that take the best maple from this...

through this...

and eventually to this...

To order solid-maple RockBats... click here

To order maple-hickory RockBats composites... click here