Some have claimed that differences in the physical shape of today's bats, which sport thinner handles favored by modern players, are causing bats to break more readily.

Many theories-pitchers pitching faster, batters swinging harder, inferior wood having less structural integrity-have been floated to explain the rise in bat failures. Meanwhile, a Mets fan is suing New York City for $5.5 million after a flying bat sent him from his seat, leaving him with permanent facial plates and expensive medical bills. Two months later, an umpire in Kansas City was forced to leave the field with blood streaming down his face, stabbed by an errant shard of maple. In April, a fan at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles took a splintered barrel to the head, breaking her jaw in two places. The investigation comes amidst record numbers of bats breaking throughout the league, often with disastrous results. Play icon The triangle icon that indicates to play The team is expected to focus specifically on bats that split into two or more pieces, using video analysis to pinpoint those models that pose the most potential danger to fans. Kretschmann is one of four specialists hired by MLB and its players union, including experts in bat design, wood properties and statistics. 'Fifteen hundred sounds like a lot of bats, but there's many, many different models that people swing, so in order to get a statistically representative set, you need quite a few.'

Forest Products Laboratory working on the project. And it's basically a bunch of cubbyholes with bats stacked everywhere, aligned by teams and aligned by models,' says David Kretschmann, an engineer with the U.S. 'You have to envision this as being a warehouse, like a wholesale retail place. After a meeting in New York on Thursday with representatives from the league's safety and health committee, top researchers tell PM that they're now set to pore over the pieces of the Bat Cave. For the past two months, every bat broken in Major League Baseball play-over 1500 so far-has been collected, catalogued and stored at an undisclosed warehouse in Wisconsin.

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