I remember back in the “player model” days in the mid 2010’s that a friend of mine had purchased a bat from a “name on the bat” player following the Smoky. He preferred a 1oz EL, but the brand already had a figurehead for that. His model was marketed as balanced, but all of his game bats were ELs. His reasoning was that “the manufacturer made it like this, so it’s clean”. Not sure if that’s accurate, and I don’t think it is, but I assume items like that are more common than blatantly putting out “hot bats” these days.