WHY BUY AN X BAT?

With scores of baseball bat makers new and old in the market, why would you choose an X BAT? We have asked this of many of the 300+ Major League baseball players who choose to earn their livelihood with our X BATS. We have many more choices of models, beautiful craftsmanship, more color choices, a furniture like finish and we custom make and engrave our customers X BATS just like the one we make for the pros. Most importantly, It comes down to the wood. Players who make their living at this game have found our wood superior to that of every other maple baseball bat company out there. Further, we are the only wood baseball bat company that makes one grade of bat with only the top quality wood that meets the high standards of professional players and we will make this for ALL of our customers. What makes us stand out? Why is our maple harder, stronger and longer lasting than other bats on the market?

The reason players worldwide have switched in overwhelming numbers to maple for their wood baseball bats is the hardness, density and strength that maple has over other woods. There are a few woods that are harder but they are too heavy and dense to use for baseball bats for today’s game. As pitching speeds have increased and the number of late breaking pitches are being thrown more, players need bats they can swing fast. The longer a hitter waits to identify a pitch, the better chance he has of hitting his pitch and not get fooled by the pitchers’ pitch. Major League hitters will tell you that pitching is all deception and hitting is all adjustment. A hitter needs to use a baseball bat he can wait until the last fraction of a second to swing giving himself the best possible result. Because maple is a strong dense wood, it compresses the ball more and the result is 15-20% more pop, carry, exit speed and distance. The tradeoff for implementing this material to make baseball bats is weight. At least 50% of the maple baseball bat billets we produce are too heavy to use for bats. Other companies find a way to use this wood so they can stay in business. The result is a compromise to the player who uses these bats.

Maple baseball bat billets are produced in 3 x 3 x 37.5 square billets. Almost every baseball bat company who makes maple baseball bats buys these billets from mills that produce these billets for the furniture industry. The furniture industry shares similar specifications for these billets. They must be all sap, all select, all clear and all straight grained. This alone eliminates 90% of maple billets. The biggest difference is that we care about weight and strength and the furniture industry only cares about how the wood looks. It doesn’t have to perform for them. If 4 table legs weigh different amounts, it takes nothing away from the piece of furniture, it’s value or it’s desirability in the market. But the weight and strength are is the most important things to the baseball bat application.

How do we insure that we are getting maple suitable for baseball bats and not furniture? We start with the trees and the logs. There are five grades of maple logs differing in desirability and price to the market competing for them. The finest cabinet and furniture makers use the top grade logs which happen to cost more than 4 times what the next grade costs. Billet makers can not buy these “veneer” or top grade logs and still remain profitable. They buy grades 2 and 3 and make billets to sell to the furniture industry and almost every maple baseball bat manufacturer. In order to get the quality found in every X BAT, we select the top grade logs for their looks and their strength. To produce billets takes a lumber mill and specialized kilns to prepare the maple billets. Again, we have every step in the production process in house and it shows in our quality. Other bat makers are trying to adapt wood produced for the furniture application to the bat application with hit or miss success.

Bats seem to be bats which is what we thought when we went into this business. What people don’t realize is that to produce Major League quality bats means you have 40% of your wood sitting in a pile, and that represents your profit. Companies have two choices- find a way to sell this 40% to the public or keep their standards and raise prices. Unfortunately most companies are not in the position to raise prices and maintain sales. Fortunately, because of our reputation and the number of big leaguers and knowledgeable amateurs swinging our bats we have been able to raise prices to keep the highest standards for every bat. We could be greedy and do both but that is just not the way we want to run our business. The largest wood bat company in the business has 11 different grades of wood with the top big leaguers getting grade 1 and the rest of the big leaguers getting grade 2, minor leaguers in AA and AAA getting grades 3-5 , minor leaguers in A ball and rookie getting grade 6-7 and the public getting the rest. If you want to produce big league bats, you’ve got to figure out what to do with that 40% of billets that don’t pass muster or you won’t be around long. That’s the challenge in the MAPLE bat business that most people don’t know about. As a small company we are in the position to do what the large production oriented companies can’t and won’t do.

We cut our own logs because we get a higher yield of usable billets when we start with what we have learned from experience is the right log. Then the logs are milled into 3 1/4 x 3 1/4 x 38 inch square billets. Then those rough billets are put in our kilns to dry. Our drying cycle takes about a week with very specialized kilns. Then those billets must be run through a planer to be squared off since they twist a little in the drying process. The they must be weighed. About 35% are too heavy or have smaller imperfections in the grain which make them unsuitable for pro quality bats. Those are put aside to be sold to furniture manufacturers for table legs and chair backs. The 65% that look good are then put into a machine to turn them into round billets 2 3/4 x 37 inches. Again, they must be re-weighed and about another 5% are found to be too heavy or have unseen imperfections making them unsuitable for pro quality bats. Now we have to catalogue the weighed billets and after making tens of thousands of baseball bats we know what weight billet we need to start with to make a particular model in a particular length that needs to end up at the player’s specified weight. Sometimes we have the billets for these bats, sometimes we need to wait for the next kiln cycle or the next. Then we find another 5-10% don’t pass quality control after they are turned into bats. The result is a major league quality maple bats unlike no other on the market available for the non-pro player today.

What seems like a very simple low tech business becomes much more complex when you have stringent quality standards to satisfy the most discriminating clientele in the world. We strive every day to maintain that level of performance so baseball players can get the maximum performance out of their abilities by using the best tool available for hitting a baseball hard and far.

We understand the passion which players who embrace the game of baseball have. We have the same love for the game and will not compromise our quality or the wood we make each and every X BATS with. This quality does not come inexpensively which is why X BATS cost more than other baseball bats. Since the baseball bat is the single piece of equipment on all of sports that has the greatest impact on a player’s performance, why go to the plate with anything but the best. X BATS are the best and will be the best bats in baseball as long as we have continue to have the support of our loyal following of players from youth baseball through high school and college baseball to the professional level and beyond to men who play the game into their twilight years for the love of the game.

X BATS understands the passion and we keep the passion alive in every product we produce for you.