Victus Bats Axe Handle Review | The MLB Gets Wood Grip Crazy

By Bat Digest | Last Updated November 17, 2022

Over a year ago we reviewed the Axe Handle bat lineup and were thoroughly impressed. Within that year, Axe Bats made an agreement with Victus Bats and designed the first MLB prototype of the bat.

Price Check

2018 Video

2018 Video

2018 Models

Major players in the league (Dustin Pedroia) started using the stick and the Axe bat from Victus got an insane amount of coverage nationally.

We also picked the brain of the engineers behind the asymmetric shaped handle. Earlier today, before pushing publish on this article, we spent time our best wood bat reviews page. That gave us a good feel for the wood bats out there.

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General Recomendations

In the end, we would be confident recommending the Axe handled Victus Bat to any player looking to get the absolute most out of a wood bat experience. A soon to be impressive list of MLB players would agree. If you prefer a hard maple wood bat, prefer one that passes ink dot standards and are okay getting used to an asymmetric handle, then this wood bat makes perfect sense.

Model Recommendations

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Comparable Bats

There are no other hard maple bats with an ink dot test that have the Axe Bats grip. Axe does make a high end composite wood bat but there is no ink dot test and it isn’t a pure wood bat so may not be legal in your league. Otherwise, Axe makes a whole slew of bats including a 2016 Hyperwhip bat that takes one sided hitting to the next level—but it is aluminum. If you want an ink dot tested wood bat with an axe handle you have one option: The Victus Bats Axe Handle DP15A (price check).

Construction

The Victus bat is a traditional Maple Hard wood bat with an ink dot test made for elite players in the wood baseball bat space. More significantly, the bat’s handle is shaped like the bat handle on an axe. We have previously reviewed the functions of a bat from Axe Bats, but as a refresher:

An axe shaped bat handle allows you to:
- Get to the ball quicker. Studies have shown, really, that a handle with an asymmetric shape allow your wrists to more naturally drive to the front of your body. When your hands are more easily drawn towards the baseball, bat speed naturally increases. As a result, an axe shaped handle gives you the ability to get to the ball quicker.
- Hit on the right side of the barrel. Since an axe shaped handle forces your hands onto the bat in a certain way, it guarantees contact on the bat happens on the same side of the barrel. From an engineering standpoint this is great news. If you know where contact will always be made you can force the best part of the barrel directly to the ball at contact. In a wood bat in particular, this not only gives you greater density by hitting directly on the face grain, but also increased durability.
- Decrease hand sting. It could be argued, the asymmetric handle does for the bottom hand what a ProHitter does for the top hand. That is, a bat handle that conforms to the shape of your hands more fully is better capable of distributing hand sting throughout the entire palm and giving you better grip on the bat. As a result, the bottom hand shaped more according to how your hand wants to be shaped during a swing doesn’t have as much hand sting as a traditional knob. Less hand sting means more confidence, harder swings and less injury.

Overall Ratings

The overall rating uses seven different weighted metrics to determine our overall score. Half of total rating comes from the player and our exit speed tests (Player Rating: 25%, Performance: 25%).The other categories are Relevance (20%), Demand (10%), Durability (10%), Resell Score (5%), and Tech Specs (5%).

*: When a bat is denoted by a star (*) it is a preliminary rating. Expect it to be updated as we learn more about the bat and gather more data.

(PlaRa) Player Rating: We measure player rating from user reviews. Those users include our own hitters that we test at the lab as well as reviews we find online.

(ExVe) Performance: Performance measures the exit speeds and distances we capture in our hitting lab with HitTrax using these bats.

(Relv) Relevance: We measure the number of sizes and the MOI of the bat. Bats with a wider range of options get a better score.

(Dmnd) Demand: Demand is measured by consumer sentiment and the buzz around the bat.

(Drb) Durability: A bat’s durability is measured by user reviews as well as feedback from manufacturers.

(ReSl) Resell Score: Based on the price the bats go for used. Higher prices mean greater user demand which means, generally, a better bat. A resell value closer to its original price means a higher score.

(Tech) Tech Specs: We rate the bat on its technological advancements from previous years and compared to the industry at large. This is our chance to reward companies who are trying to innovate.
MOI
MOI or Mass Moment of Inertia is a measurement of bat swing weight. This quantifies how difficult it is to swing a bat. The industry often refers to this as things like End Load or Balanced but those words have been overused to the point of meaninglessness. We measure the actual swing weights of each bat we test using the industry-standard pendulum period, balance point, and scale weight. You can read more about that here.
Price
The price is the original MSRP price of the bat.
Type
The types of bats are single-piece alloy (SPA), two-piece composite (TPC), single-piece composite (SPC), hybrid (Hyb.), and wood (Wood). Hybrid bats are made of composite handles and alloy barrles.
Date
The estimated date the bat began distribution.