Baseball players swung very light and very heavy bats through our instrument and the speed of the bat was recorded. These
data were used to make mathematical models for each person. Then these models were coupled with equations of physics for bat-ball
collisions to compute the Ideal Bat Weight for each individual. However, these calculations required the use of a sophisticated
instrument that is not conveniently available to most people. So, we tried to find items in our database that correlated with
Ideal Bat Weight. However, because many cells in the database were empty, we could not use traditional statistical techniques
or even neural networks. Therefore, three new methods were used to estimate the missing data: (i) a neural network was trained
using subjects that had no empty cells, then that neural network was used to predict the missing data, (ii) the data patching
facility of a commercial software package was used, and (iii) the empty cells were filled with random numbers. Then, using
these fully populated databases, several simple models were derived for recommending bat weights.
Keywords Baseball bats - Softball bats - Ideal Bat Weight - Coefficient of restitution - Neural networks - Missing data