Harris County company makes baseball bats for the pros
HOUSTON (KTRK) -- When Astros 1st baseman Yuli Gurriel recently hit a home run during the World Series, he swung a bat made right here in Harris County.
OTW Bat Company is tucked away on the northwest side of town. It's a business located in a routine warehouse. Most people would drive by and not even notice it.
Joe Perez owns the shop. He started the company in 2013.
"Like I say, we're only in our 4th year. We're a very small company. We're a small custom boutique. A lot of people do not realize we're right here and we are making bats for Major League Baseball," said Perez. "We came up with a new finishing process, a proprietary finishing process, that we felt would make the surface of the bat harder. Everybody is looking for hardness. Everybody wants that exit speed. Everybody wants that contact point and that ball to drive off the barrel. In what we call in our industry, pop. They want to hear that pop."
Perez said this season his company provided bats to about 60 MLB players including 4 Astros. Perez said the pros can use anywhere from 60 to 100 bats during a year.
OTW Bat Company is currently creating Houston Strong bats to sell to the public.
