More maple bat swings: Jeter calls 'em 'dangerous,' D.Young: 'I'm scared'

More follow-up to our Sunday column on the maple bat problem in the MLB (click on this link), comes this story on the Associated Press today:

By RONALD BLUM
AP Baseball Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- Derek Jeter is astonished as he watches splintered pieces of shattered bats spinning around the infield like pinballs.

"It seems like this year more than any other year, the bats are flying all over the place. I can't remember a year where it's been this bad," he said Monday. "It's dangerous. Hopefully, somebody doesn't get hurt."

Jeter is an ash man, using Louisville Slugger models since he came up, and has never been tempted to make the switch to maple. Major League Baseball has started considering whether to ban maple bats, a move that would have to be done jointly with the players' association.

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Another take on the maple bat problem came today from Washington Nationals first baseman Dmitri Young, the former Oxnard's Rio Mesa High star, in a story (linked here) on the Nationals' MLB.com site.

"I'm scared," said Young, who uses maple bats.

Young said he had a large chunk of a shattered maple bat fly toward him in a game earlier this year while he was trying to make a play on a ball.

"I wound up making the play, but it's just, when you see the bat, the first thing you do is get the deer-in-headlights look," Young said. "You don't want to get hit with one of those; you don't want to get stabbed."

Young said he thinks the problem with the bats isn't what they're made of, but how they are made.

Now in his 12th professional season, Young said he sees many young players with poor weight-to-length differential, making their bats more top-heavy and negating the maple's density. It is that density that makes maple stronger than the formerly preferred ash, which many players agreed splinters too easily, though it rarely shatters.

Whatever the reason may be for maple bats' propensity for breaking, Young is not the only member of the Nationals to express concern about the dangers of shattering bats.

"Get rid of the maple," pitcher Shawn Hill said.

"Every year, it's getting worse and worse," added Jason Bergmann, standing next to Hill in the Nationals locker room Saturday. "We probably get four of five balls a game that are breaking bats. They're projectiles."