Baseball is a human game – when a hitter is at the plate, a computer can’t swing the bat for them.
But with artificial intelligence in bat technology, a computer can make sure they’re going to the plate with the best bat possible.
The 2024 Rawlings Mach Ai and Clout Ai baseball bats feature this new “Ai” technology. This innovative new tech actually allowed us to create the highest-performing bats on the market! But how exactly does Ai work, and how does the design of the Mach Ai and Clout Ai differ from traditional alloy bats?
Read on to find out!
What Is Artificial Intelligence (Ai)?
Simply put, artificial intelligence is the replication of human intelligence in computers. Ai-powered computers are programmed to take in information, “think” about that information, and make recommendations based on that “thinking.”
Ai is everywhere in the modern world. The digital assistant on your phone is powered by Ai, as are robot vacuums and self-driving or self-parking cars. Social media feeds are powered by Ai that determines what kind of content a user might be interested in.
In industrial applications, Ai can be an incredibly useful tool to analyze huge sets of data – data that would take humans hours, days, or weeks to sift through – in a matter of seconds. And that brings us back to our newest baseball bats.
How Metal Baseball Bats Are Made
Designing a baseball bat is a bit of a balancing act. Every decision a bat engineer makes creates a cascade of effects that can change the way a bat performs or feels. If an engineer wants the barrel taper to start earlier, that usually means taking weight out of somewhere else in the bat to compensate. If they want to add more mass in the sweet spot, that means having to change the composition of the rest of the bat to counteract the added swing weight.
Each bat is like an intricate puzzle – and these puzzles are incredibly difficult. The goal of each bat design is to find a balance of three different factors:
- Pop: How hard the ball comes off the bat.
- Swing weight: How easy the bat is to swing.
- Forgiveness: Maximizing the size of the “sweet spot” and reducing vibration to the hands upon contact.
In metal baseball bats, these three factors are controlled by the “wall” of the barrel – a.k.a. the thickness of the metal in the area where you hit the ball. There is some very complicated math that goes into this, but here’s the (over-simplified) gist:
- Thinner barrel wall = more pop, faster swing, less forgiveness.
- Thicker barrel wall = less pop, slower swing, more forgiveness.
There is no “perfect” bat, because each player is different – some hitters would gladly sacrifice some sweet spot for the chance to get more pop on perfect contact, whereas others would sacrifice pop in order to have as much forgiveness as possible.
All these calculations are made even more complicated by the fact that bats need to meet certain standards in order to get certified for game-use. In high school, all bats must be -3 and meet the .50 BBCOR standard – basically a fancy way of saying that the bat can’t have too much pop or be too light to swing.
All this adds up to some very complicated engineering work. In fact, this work is so complicated that humans can only produce a handful of geometrical variations of the barrel wall due to time constraints.
But what doesn’t have time constraints? Artificial intelligence.
How Rawlings Uses Ai to Design Metal Bats
With the Mach Ai and Clout Ai, our engineers used an Ai-powered super computer to run thousands of the same calculations that were previously performed by humans. In less time than it would take a human to produce 15 models of variable barrel wall design, our Ai can produce 1,500.
The computer is able to analyze an unlimited number of solutions under a given set of design requirements (such as the three factors mentioned above, along with relevant certification criteria). The result is a barrel design that’s unlike anything produced before it.
The Ai-powered design program analyzes the barrel wall one quarter-inch at a time, computing possible variations in the thickness and contour of the metal alloy.
The computer program creates hundreds of outputs with different variations in the barrel wall. These are then tested against the performance specifications chosen by the bat engineers.
The final output features an optimized alloy design that's far more complicated than what human-only specifications could design — a barrel wall that's completely optimized down to the finest detail.
Each quarter-inch of the Mach Ai and Clout Ai barrel is meticulously optimized to balance pop, swing weight, and forgiveness. The Mach Ai is optimized to give hitters a lighter feel with more bat control, whereas the Clout Ai is optimized to give hitters a more end-loaded feel with maxed-out power. Both bats perform as close to the .50 BBCOR standard as possible across more of the hitting surface (barrel) than any other bat on the market.
Thanks to Ai, hitters can be sure they’re not sacrificing a thing when they step in the box.
Artificial Intelligence, Real Results
Baseball is a human game – but the game’s best players are the ones who use the best technology.
The Mach Ai and Clout Ai are going to change the way that metal bats are designed, and how they perform on field, and you can be on the cutting edge of the latest in this Ai technology. Get your new Ai-powered bat today!
