I'm by no means an expert; I've never actually played anything higher than Little League. So take this with a grain - or garbage bin - of salt.
When I was going to college I had a dog that needed exercise. I went and bought a bat and a dozen balls and since my front yard was 360' deep from my porch to the road I started whacking balls that way every day when I came home from school. When I started out I had a 34inch 33oz bat with a flared knob and a thick handle. The farthest I could hit a ball just throwing it up to myself was about 300' to start with. Then after maybe two months of daily practice I got up to 360' on more than half of my swings (my whole family is plain old 'country strong').
The problem was that I didn't like the feel of the bat - which was a wooden regulation bat - so I went to the sporting goods store and bought three more of varying lengths and weights. After experimenting with them for another six months I found that the thin-handled flared knob Louisville Slugger at 34inch 31oz was the sweet spot for me. I could launch more than 1/4 of the balls I tossed up to myself just over 400' - my best ever was 430 in the air using a regulation bat and ball since I actually measured it with a roller after smacking it Throughout my experimentation I played around with famous batting stances and learned a whale of a lot about how the stance impacts the swing path.
What I found with heavy bats (heaviest I had was 35oz) was that they were far less 'nimble' in my hands and I *think* it's primarily because I have longer than average arms. I had to cheat on my swing and get my weight back farther than was natural in order to get the barrel into an aggressive position consistently. But my neighbor had short fireplug arms and he much preferred the heavy bats. This was what got me thinking about arm length being a factor though I'm not educated enough on the subject to make any declarations.
It *seems to me* that longer arms would permit a hitter to get more leverage on a bat's swing plane and could therefore rely more heavily on the VELOCITY factor of the swing than the MASS factor whereas my neighbor had a shorter stroke but he could still get the ball 360' consistently. He however preferred shorter bats than I used so he choked up an inch or two on my heavy bat. This *seems* borne out to my untrained eye when I see long-bodied hitters with those Adam Laroche swings that seem to go for days contrasted by Carlos Pena-type hitters who seem to have much 'shorter' swing paths - or for a closer-to-home example Ken Griffey Jr. vs. Bret Boone. One had the beautiful long arcing swing and the other looked like he was chopping down a forest.
Anyway I doubt this particular post contributes too much but it seems like limb length should come somewhere into the conversation about bat length/weight.
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