This is a copy of a BLOG I posted last year on Mother’s Day ~ it’s still relevant. Hope you enjoy it!
‘PINK BATS A PERFORMANCE ENHANCER? YOU DECIDE!
Occasionally I’ll find an article so unique I’m tempted to “plagiarise”! This is one of those articles, but reprinted with permission from a really hard-working blogger who went to an amazing amount of work to produce this delightful piece for all of us! Thanks to Mike Clair at Old Time Family Baseball for sharing this.
“There’s something wonderful about seeing a group of men finally stop the macho act and swing pink bats in honor of their mothers and to help the fight against breast cancer. (Plus, baseball players can finally realize how well pink complements their skin tones.) In lieu of a full game recap for the Mother’s Day games, I thought I would collect a master list of the players who did or did not use pink bats and finally see if ones love for their mother is a performance enhancer.A few ground rules:
- This does not take into account players wearing pink accessories, only their bats.
- I counted the starting nine on each team, so any pink-bat-swinging pinch-hitters or late-game substitutions have been left out.
- I used MLB.tv footage as my guide, so if I couldn’t tell the color of a players bat, I considered it a non-pink bat. Some players like Brian Roberts appeared to have a a little bit of pink of around the handle of the bat, but because it was so pale and hard to identify, they were left out.
- Due to a lack of a variety of things, time being among them, I have only used hits, at-bats, home runs, RBI, and runs scored as my guide. Sorry, my sabermetric brethren, maybe next year.
- I’m only one man, so any updates or corrections can be sent here or left in the comments.
Without further adieu: Pink Bats: 685 AB, 193H, .285 BA, 15 HR, 85 RBI, 84 R
Non-Pink: 287 AB, 42 H, .216 BA, 6 HR, 27 RBI, 31 R
Is this just a small sample size, do better hitters choose pink bats more often, or is there a Mother’s Day boost? That will have to wait for next year to see if the numbers are straightened out, but here are some notes:
- Pink batters clearly did better, hitting nearly 70 points higher than their non-pink counterparts.
- Pink batters also homered once ever 45.67 AB compared to 47.83 for people who don’t love their mothers.
- 187 of the 270 starters used pink bats, good for 69% of the Major League population.
- Neither Hairston brother swung a pink bat.
- Derek Jeter and A-Rod didn’t use pink bats. Alex Rodriguez clearly hates mothers while Derek Jeter didn’t want to detract attention from breast cancer survivors.
- Yorvit Torrealba used a bat with a black handle and pink barrel, the only player I noticed with such a combination.
- Rockies starters who didn’t swing pink sticks? They went 0-17. Love your mothers, fellas.
Click here for individual team and player info.
Final note, only players who used pink bats are listed. Consider this to be the master list of 2011 pink bat users as it will be updated if new information becomes available.”
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