In an era where maple bats dominate the baseball world, there is a small woodtype that is sawing its way into more and more players hands. Are birch bats the new kid on the block?

Not exactly. Birch bats have been around since B45 from Quebec Canada brought them to the market in 2001. Actually, the owner of B45 bats, a pretty successful player himself, started trying birch and found out that birch was hard, durable and getting harder after every ball hitting the barrel. Why did he try yellow birch? A coincidence? No. Yellow birch was named Quebec's official tree on November 17, 1993. It is one of the main sources of Canada's hardwood lumber. It is there. Everywhere you look. Its tight-grained wood, which is strong and heavy and resists wear, is as hard as white oak but not as hard as sugar maple. And there you go, the birth of a business plan. B45 was in the middle of their source: a lot of birch wood. B45 was later followed by more manufacturers like MaxBat and Louisville Slugger that also featured birch models next to their maple lineup.

Due to their composition, birch bats are commonly dubbed a “perfect mixture of ash and maple.” It’s typically described as having the hardness of a maple bat with the flex of an ash bat. One big difference between birch and maple bats is that birch bats require a break-in period, while maple has its peak hardness when it leaves the shop. The grain structure of a birch bat needs about 100 hits, or “boning,” to compress the wood and optimize the bat’s performance. And also: you don't have to hit with the bat logo up or down, you can hit it all around to get the hardness evenly spread over your barrel.

Want to try it out? Waste no time, Bat King Europe will add a line of Yellow birch bats to our stock, proudly led off by B45.

Pros for Birch bats

• Has a flex similar to ash
• Similar to maple when it comes to hardness (doesn’t break down due to normal wear and tear)
• Combo of hardness and flexibility makes birch bats more durable than any other type of wood bats, while showing pop

Cons for Birch bats

• Needs a short break in period of somewhere between 30 to 50 contacts to reach maximum hardness