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There has been a lot of speculation and buzz around the softball community concerning the new 2010 ASA bat mph standards. 2004 has the ASA standard at 98mph and bat companies stayed below this standard and as the bats were broken in or put through a rolling machine the mph increased. Late 2007 the ASA came out with a bat compression testing machine that was used at Worlds to make sure bats were below the 98mph standard. These machines are expensive and have not made it around the ASA softball community to police bats as hoped. The machine shows a light if the bat is in fact over the 98 mph limit not the actual mph reading. These machines have had there problems with maintenance also. Softball parks were just not ready to shell out the $1000 for a bat tester which has no real way of gauging the mph.
The ASA will not comment on their plans for the 2010 season but they had to let bat companies know what is coming. Because of this fact some representatives have this information; I had talked to 4 representatives from 3 different companies and all four said they were aware of a 93 mph limit for bat manufactures in regards to new bats in the future. I could not get specifics because they had none but they knew something was coming and everyone of them quoted 93 mph. One did say that the pre 93 mph bats will be phased out like the Miken Freak, Easton Synergy 2, and Mizuno Orange Crush were in 2004. These bats were put on a 2 year time limit and then they were illegal for ASA play. Were does bat rolling come into play with all this? This is the method ASA representatives based their decision on. Basically, how much more mph batted ball speed will a bat gain by rolling it. The 5 mph gap the ASA has (potentially) seems about right because rolling increases distance 20-40 feet which equates to about 2.5 mph to 5 mph (every mph= 8feet of distance). This is great news for bat rolling companies and bad news for bat selling companies. If this is true then all the pre 93 mph bats are going to sit there like logs with no one wanting to buy them because of the ensuing changes.
These bats will be the hottest thing on the planet and then when the ASA announces the ensuing banned list they will become useless because of the mph rules in other associations; the bats in these associations hit much farther with a higher mph limit. 5 years of making these bats and all of them will be junk it is hard to think of all the money invested that will be wasted with this new rule. Some people are speculating that ASA is going to go to all aluminum bats; this is not true. You will hear a lot of things out there but the consistent number will be 93. So get ready to be disappointed!
