How Dylan Crews, Tommy 'Tanks' White and LSU baseball's top hitters were fitted for the perfect bat

BATON ROUGE – Every warrior needs their perfect weapon.

Think of the sequence in the movie "Kill Bill Vol. 1," when Uma Thurman's character, Beatrix Kiddo, travels to Okinawa, Japan, to have sushi-bar owner and famed Japanese sword smith Hattori Hanzō create the perfect weapon for her to exact her revenge.

For No. 1 LSU baseball, its partnership with Marucci Sports serves a similar purpose: For the company to create the perfect weapon that will allow each slugger to inflict pain and suffering on the baseball. These swords will be what the Tigers will use to combat No. 3 Arkansas when the Razorbacks come to Alex Box Stadium for a three-game series beginning Friday (7 p.m., ESPN2).

But like Hanzō's sword-making techniques, the process behind finding the right bat for the right hitter is a meticulous undertaking that includes advanced technology and constant communication between the maker and the wielder.

Inside the lab

The Baseball Performance Lab at Marucci Sports' headquarters in Baton Rouge is one of the most advanced hitting centers on the planet. Countless major leaguers and LSU baseball stars Dylan Crews, Tommy White and Tre Morgan have come there to hit.

But none of them went to Marucci's state-of-the-art facility to adjust their swing mechanics or improve their timing at the plate. They came to the lab to get fitted for the perfect bat, the same way a teenager goes to Men's Wearhouse to find the perfect tuxedo for the prom.

"(One thing) we always kind of joke about is, 'If you come in here and we can't figure it out, we should probably get a new job,' " Liam Mucklow, the founder of the Baseball Performance Lab, said.

Marucci's lab uses a variety of advanced technology to determine the perfect weapon for each hitter. Its batting cage includes a 3-D body motion capture system – to track bat speed, bat acceleration and a hitter's movement patterns; a Rapsodo machine – to measure the ball's exit velocity and spin rate after it's hit; and dual force plates underneath a hitter's feet in the batter's box – to calculate the amount of force a hitter applies to their swing from the ground up.

"We consider what we do is measuring the full batted-ball event," Mucklow said.

Among the big leaguers who have hit at the facility are Atlanta Braves third baseman Austin Riley, New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor, St. Louis Cardinals sluggers Nolan Arenado and Paul Goldschmidt, and former LSU and current Houston Astros star Alex Bregman.

And besides the likes of Crews, White and Morgan, Gavin Dugas, Alex Milazzo and Cade Beloso have also hit in the lab to get fitted for bats. Because of the NCAA's BBCOR standards, Marucci can't produce custom-made bats for every player, but the lab is still helpful for Marucci – in testing the quality of the bats – and for the players, in determining which bat type and size is best for them.

"What's crazy to me that hasn't been done until now is there's never been a line of bats designed around the athlete," Mucklow said. "...There's never been any regard for the actual person that has to get the bat to the ball to make a collision happen."

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What bats does LSU use?

One of Marucci's latest bats in its main brand line, the 2023 CATX Connect BBCOR bat, has been the bat most of LSU's team has gravitated toward.

The CATX Connect is a two-piece hybrid bat that has an aluminum barrel and a composite handle. It's also end-loaded, meaning that the end of its barrel is heavier.

End-loaded bats are often used by bigger power hitters, fitting for the likes of White, Crews and Jared Jones. But some of LSU's lighter hitters, like Josh Pearson and Brady Neal, also use Marucci's two-piece.

"The ball just jumps off of it really well," Crews said. "It's definitely the most popular bat we have on the team."

Besides the CATX Connect, there's also the 2023 CATX BBCOR one-piece aluminum bat, a more balanced bat that Paxton Kling has used, and the 2023 Victus NOX 2 BBCOR two-piece bat that Jordan Thompson has used.

"I just like the one-piece just because it's lighter and I swing it a little harder," Kling said.

While Marucci was developing the CATX and CATX Connect last year, they went out to Alex Box Stadium multiple times to have LSU's players swing their prototypes, months before they were available on the market.

Ryder Dupuis, Marucci's Vice President of Product Development, believes that testing a new bat with players on the field and receiving their live feedback is critical in their evaluations of the performance of a new bat.

"You do this up in here (the Baseball Performance Lab) that's really fitting the players for the bats," Dupuis said. "But when you talk about actually designing the bats for the masses, like these (LSU hitters) are the best hitters in the world that have to use BBCOR bats. So it was (important to) utilize their feedback and what they do on the field performance-wise."

The man at Marucci responsible for receiving feedback and communicating with the players about the bats is Justin Cryer, Marucci's Director of College Sales. He also delivered the then newly approved CATX bats to Hattiesburg for LSU's regional last season, as LSU and Marucci's other partnered schools which made the NCAA Regionals got to use the bats before they were released to the public.

According to Cryer, LSU's players like swinging the CATX bats because of their balance and unique barrel profile. They tell Cryer that even the end-loaded CATX Connect has more balance than most two-piece bats and that they're comfortable with the longer barrels on both bats since they're similar to the composite-only bats they used in high school.

"They feel like when they mis-hit balls with either bat, they feel like they get just as good of a performance," Cryer said.

LSU doesn't have the same goal as Beatrix Kiddo. The only thing the Tigers are punishing with their carefully designed weapons is baseballs, having already collected 235 hits and 224 runs through 21 games this season.

Of course, LSU's success goes beyond just the bats they wield. Crews and White would be smashing home runs regardless of the sticks they'd be swinging. But the comfort the Tigers have with the Marucci's CATX bats has certainly helped them on the field.

Hattori Hanzō would be proud.

Koki Riley covers LSU sports for The Daily Advertiser and the USA TODAY Sports South Region. Email him at kriley@theadvertiser.com and follow him on Twitter at @KokiRiley.

This article originally appeared on Lafayette Daily Advertiser: LSU baseball: The Marucci bats Dylan Crews and Tommy 'Tanks' White use