Martin Maldonado did not exactly have a great 2022 season at the dish.Despite being named a Silver Slugger finalist this year, the Astros catcher put together one of the worst seasons of his career, posting a .600 OPS with 15 home runs.Before Houston began its World Series against the Phillies, Maldonado reached out to his former Angels teammate Albert Pujols about po sibly using some of his bats. Pujols, a future Hall of Famer, was coming off one of his better seasons since 2011, his last year in St. Malcolm Brogdon Jersey Louis before leaving for Anaheim.Pujols happily obliged, sending half a dozen bats.Martin Maldonado reached out to Albert Pujols before the start of the World Series and asked Pujols to send him some bats -- and today, a half-dozen arrived from the future HOFer. Maldonado believes the Pujols always got some of the best quality of bats because of his stature. Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) MORE: The bat must have worked. Maldonado hit an RBI single in the second inning of Houston's Game 1 lo s Vin Baker Jersey to the Phillies.But on Saturday, Maldonado was back to using his own bats. And the Fox broadcast said it was because Maldonado was told he could not use Pujols' bats.Was the Astros catcher using illegal bats? The Sporting News takes a look. Based on what the Fox broadcast said, it would appear Maldonado used an illegal bat during Game 1. But it's a bit more complicated than it might sound."Martin Maldonado is using a different bat today here in Game 2," reporter Tom Verducci said on-air. "He found out from MLB today that the bat he used last night was not a legal bat. It was a model that he obtained from Albert Pujols and he used it because he thought that it was very similar in size and weight to his own model. The barrel, he said, was slightly bigger."Tom Verducci just casually told everyone that Maldonado used an illegal bat last night AND that Albert Pujols has been using that model for 12 years Kyle Korver Jersey because it was grandfathered inOk then Starting 9 (@Starting9) The broadcast mentioned that the bats Pujols uses were grandfathered in from a 2010 rule change. Since Pujols had been using the same bat model since he debuted in 2001, he was allowed to keep using the bats after the rule change.But that doesn't mean everyone is allowed to use them. Maldonado, who debuted in 2011, cannot use those bats.MORE: The Fox broadcast did not specify. ,it would appear the rule change is related to maple bats. Starting in 2009, players could not use maple bats with a density lower than 0.024 pounds per cubic inch, the article noted. But that rule only applied to players joining the 40-man roster for the first time. The article noted that players in the league before 2009 could grandfather in the low-density bats.The D.J. Wilson Jersey concern with the density of the bats has nothing to do with helping to make contact or adding power to swings. Instead, the reason for the change was that bats were breaking too frequently. Changes to the bats reportedly helped reduce the number of broken bats. , MLB reduced the diameter of the bat from 2.75 inches to 2.61 inches for safety purposes, hoping to reduce the frequency of bats shattering.Given that Pujols has been allowed to use grandfathered bats since the rule changes, it is clear that the Milwaukee Bucks Jeresy bats don't give batters a distinct advantage. Indeed, the decision to have Maldonado use a different bat in Game 2 was instead about player safety, as .Bat maker Jack Marucci told the A sociated Pre s that the AP5, the bat model Maldonado was using from Pujols, was one of the original models he made, and Pujols was one of the first players who gave Marucci a bat to replicate. Related Articles