It doesn’t matter if you’re the parent on the sidelines or if you’re actively involved in coaching youth baseball, choosing good equipment for the serious little leaguer is always a tedious proposition, especially when it comes to picking youth baseball bats. A number of factors have to be taken into consideration when it comes to picking out a good bat. I have always recommended fitting the bat to the child, not the other way around when choosing the right bat for youth baseball.

There are dozens of schools of thought when it comes to how to select a bat for your child properly, but for the most part there are always five key factors to consider:

· height of the child

· weight of the child

· length of the bat

· weight of the bat

· size of the bat’s barrel

Sometimes, in the more sophisticated situations, other factors you may want to take into consideration are the grip and the taper of the bat, but that’s just more food for thought.

The following scale can be used as a guideline when selecting the proper size baseball bat. Interestingly enough, the scale resulted from a study conducted at the University of Northern Arizona in which the best bat weight was determined by the player’s height or weight. The key word here is guideline in that the scale is a suggestion to follow and not a hard and fast rule.

Notice that the bat size is relative to the player’s height in the Youth (8-10 year olds) and High School/College categories, whereas in the Youth (11-12 year olds) category, it is determined by the player’s weight.