BALTIMORE — Everyone is talking about “The Torpedo.”
A number of Yankees are utilizing a novel bat shape — a seemingly inflated barrel that is thickest and heaviest where the player most frequently makes contact, then narrowing at the end. The configuration has been dubbed “The Torpedo” for its vague similarities to the eponymous weapon.
Since the Yankees erupted for 15 home runs in the first three games of the season, including nine on Saturday, the design has caught everyone’s attention.
“It’s amazing it hasn’t happened before,” said Red Sox reliever Liam Hendriks. “It makes sense, especially when you see guys like, ‘You hit the ball off this part of the bat 70 percent of the time, why don’t we move the barrel to that part of the bat?’ ”
A member of the Red Sox coaching staff is very familiar with the bat’s introduction. Assistant hitting coach Dillon Lawson was with the Yankees from 2018-23, including a stint as the team’s director of hitting and big league hitting coach from 2021-23.
During that time, Aaron Leanhardt — who earned a PhD in physics from MIT and was an assistant professor at Michigan before joining the Yankees in 2018 — also was part of the team’s hitting brain trust. Leanhardt started exploring a redesigned bat to improve the frequency and quality of contact, based on where batters most frequently hit the ball.
“We’ve got really big, strong hitters. They’re able to impact it. Is there anything that we can do to help them make even just a little bit more contact without having to change their swing?” said Lawson. “You started looking at all the barrels, and they’re like, 2.4, 2.45 inches in diameter. And it’s like, ‘How can we get them to 2.61?’ ”
The number wasn’t random. MLB rules allow bats to be 2.61 inches at their thickest part. How big a deal is it to add roughly one-sixth of an inch to a barrel?
“For a ball to land on the right field foul line versus the left field line, that’s separated by nine milliseconds,” said Lawson. “Everything is a fraction. So how meaningful is a barrel size being maxed out? I think it’s actually very meaningful.”
Still, the design remained a work in progress. The Yankees wanted to enlarge the barrel without adding weight to the bat.
Initially, the team experimented with a larger conventional barrel and thinner handle, but found that it shattered too often. But over time, they arrived on the torpedo design, shifting weight down the bat to the point of each player’s most frequent contact. By early in the 2023 season, Lawson said, some Yankees players were using the newfangled bats.
Not everyone embraced them. Red Sox backup catcher Carlos Narváez, for instance, tried the bats last spring but didn’t stick with them.
“It was weird,” he said. “It didn’t feel bad, but I wasn’t comfortable at that moment.”
But with the benefit of time, an increasing number of Yankees big leaguers started employing them. And now, a critical mass has been reached where a handful of players on the team have been using The Torpedo, and doing damage.
The Yankees haven’t been alone in experimenting with different barrel shapes. The Orioles, according to major league sources, also have been experimenting with the shape of barrels for years. However, their reshaping has been subtler and less visually striking than the design employed by the Yankees this year.
That said, the Yankees’ early-season success — and the visually striking nature of their bats — suggests that many other players on other teams will soon follow suit.
“Hopefully we have this breakthrough and more, because baseball is more fun with offense,” said Lawson.
Alex Speier can be reached at [email protected]. Follow him @alexspeier.
