Yankees catcher Austin Wells hits a home run on a torpedo bat in the first inning against the … More Milwaukee Brewers on Sunday. (Photo by Mike Stobe)
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It’s the sexy, new buzz word in baseball — torpedo bat — after the New York Yankees bashed about a bajillion feet worth of home runs during opening weekend against the Brewers in the Bronx. You may be wondering, along with the ghost of Ty Cobb: What exactly is a torpedo bat? It’s simply a baseball bat shaped like a torpedo — with more mass on the bat’s sweet spot — developed by a former-Yankee-employee-turned-MIT physicist.
The Yanks hit 15 homers through the first three games, most of them coming off the new high-tech lumber. Yankee torpedo-bat users — Paul Goldschmidt, Austin Wells, Anthony Volpe, Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm Jr. — belted a combined nine homers during the opening series against the Milwaukee Brewers. However — and this is a big however — Yankee masher Aaron Judge wields a standard bat that he used to smash four dingers this weekend.
All this torpedo talk leads to an inevitable question: Are the Yankees cheating? Not according to the MLB’s bat rules that state under 3.02: “The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood.”
The rules also state that the end of the bat may have a cupped indentation up to 1 1/4 inches in depth, 2 inches wide and with at least a 1-inch diameter while adding experimental models must be approved by MLB.
Yankees’ Paul Goldschmidt uses a torpedo bat against the Milwaukee Brewers. (Photo by Mike … More Stobe/Getty Images)
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Back to the question: Are the bats fair? Ask Brewers manger Pat Murphy, whose pitchers yielded all those torpedo-bat bombs to the Bombers and who gave a very Pat Murphy response: “My old ass will tell you this, for sure, it ain’t the wand; it’s the magician. If the bats help, I’m sure every guy in the league will be using them within a week.”
Brewers star Christian Yelich knew nothing of the torpedo bats before the series started and said he may experiment with one to determine if it should help. “If you could use technology to make yourself perform better as long as it’s within the rules, why not?” Yelich said.
Not every Brewer had such an open-minded view of the new bat. After Saturday’s 20-9 mugging by the Yankees, Milwaukee closer Trevor Megill told the New York Post that a torpedo bat is “something used in slow-pitch softball” and that it “might not be [fair] but it’s the Yankees, so they’ll let it slide.” After Sunday’s game, McGill claimed he was misquoted but refused to clarify what might have been incorrectly reported.
Yankees manager Aaron Boone addressed the torpedo-bat drama by saying: “I say to you guys all the time, we’re trying to win on the margins and that shows up in so many different ways.”
Jomboy digs into the torpedo-bat controversy:
No official statement — or ruling — has come down from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred’s office. But to those who still feel the Yankees are cheating, consider this: Aaron Leanhardt, the former Yankees front-office staffer who developed the torpedo bat, now works with the Marlins; injured Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton used one last year; Bellinger first tried one with the Cubs in 2024; and Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers used one yesterday.
So here comes the not-so-bold prediction: Every team will soon have a bat rack loaded with torpedoes.
And in the meantime, the Yankees are loving the results — and their bats. “I love my bat,” Chisholm said with a chuckle. “I think you can tell. It doesn’t feel like a different bat. It just helps you in a real way I guess.”
