Stiff Or Flexible Baseball Bat Handle?

This Stiff vs. Flex Handle debate is the centerpiece of the baseball bat wars and complicated when evaluating baseball bat reviews. Manufacturers like Easton and Demarini have pushed the flex handle, while Louisville says a stiff handle is the way to go. By the way, a bats handle is rated at 100 for the stiffest and down to 65 for maximum flexibility.

So who is right? Kettering University conducted an in-depth study on the subject. I'll save you some time from reading their fifteen pages, thirteen graph analysis. The answer is... WE DON'T KNOW. Believe it or not that is their conclusion. Are you kidding me? Every bat manufacturer touts the benefits of one or the other and the scientists can't tell the difference. What's a ball player to do? Here's my recommendation.

First decide what you want to spend, the material that's best for you and then the handle design. Although there doesn't seem to be a scientific difference I side with the stiff handle design when all else is equal for two reasons. First, we all know the barrel needs to flex. If the handle is flexing too it just seems it has to interfere with the barrel flexing (and yes I slept through physics in HS). Hence, Louisville's stance of "when the handle flexes, the barrel can't. This reduces the potential for trampoline effect when the barrel comes into contact with the ball. A stiff handle produces more barrel flex resulting in great trampoline effect" makes more sense to me than the stance of the flex handle people. Second, after years of pushing the flex handle Easton now has a stiff handle version of all their bats. This tells me they know something. More players from little league to college go with Easton's stiff handle bats as opposed to the their flex handle bats. They even removed all of the flex handle research from their website. Again, I'm assuming they did this because they have some evidence.