Yankees' Torpedo Bats Are the Hitting Revolution MLB Has Been Waiting For

While you were out enjoying your weekend, the New York Yankees were busy launching rockets against the Milwaukee Brewers.

Or, more accurately, torpedoes. And the ostensible reason for it feels like something that could change everything.

The secret of the Yankees' new bats—everyone's calling them "torpedo bats" and, honestly, why not?—got out during the second inning of Saturday's tilt at Yankee Stadium, when YES Network announcer Michael Kay called attention to the shape of the lumber and its intended effect:

At that point, the Yankees were already four home runs into a historic nine-homer barrage that resulted in a 20-9 blowout. They concluded the three-game sweep with 15 homers to tie the MLB record for the most long balls through a team's first three games.

There is one caveat, and this is that two-time AL MVP Aaron Judge is not using a torpedo bat. That disqualifies the new bats from credit for the four that he's hit, which are more directly traced to the 6'7", 282-pounder's gigantic raw power.

Nonetheless, the esteemed Jomboy estimates that nine of the Yankees' 15 homers can be traced to torpedo bats. This might not be a cold, hard fact, but the broader narrative is already into "print the legend" territory.

Talk of torpedo bats is everywhere, and Jon Heyman of the New York Post reports that new orders for torpedo bats are rolling into Marucci Sports, a "big" supplier of the new sticks. If so, they'll soon be everywhere across MLB.

Hitters Are Overdue for an Effective Weapon

In the aftermath of Kay spilling the beans, the question on everyone's mind was whether the Yankees were breaking any rules.

The answer, in short, is no. Major League Baseball confirmed on Sunday that torpedo bats are perfectly legal, which means they'll only be going away if the league eventually decides to outlaw them.

Instead, the league should frankly be rooting for these new bats to be as big a game-changer as they seem like they could be.

Offense is in a bit of a rut these days, after all, and "these days" basically consist of the last 15 years. Home runs have helped sustain scoring to some degree, but actual hits have gotten harder and harder to come by.

Whereas the league had a .262 batting average in 2009, it was in the .250s for most of the 2010s and has spent the last five years in the .240s. The league hit .243 in 2022 and 2024, making hits rarer than they had been since Bob Gibson spearheaded the "Year of the Pitcher" in 1968.

The new rules that MLB implemented for 2023 were supposed to change things for the better for hitters, but an initial improvement to a .248 average didn't keep. Not surprising, as it wasn't really the rules that were holding hitters back.

Not as much as stuff, anyway. Fastball velocity is on a steady upward creep, and seemingly every pitcher has at least one secondary offering that's been lab-designed for maximum effectiveness. As a result, getting hits has gotten harder, largely because simply hitting the ball has gotten harder.

If you want a mic-drop stat, here you go: There were 20,510 more swings and misses in 2024 than there were in 2009.

The Promise of Torpedo Bats Is Real

On its face, the idea of a bat that is thickest where the hitter is most likely to make contact is just...so simple.

So simple, in fact, that, amazingly, it took a literal MIT physicist to come up with the concept. That's Aaron Leanhardt, who worked with the Yankees as an analyst before taking a job as the Miami Marlins' field coordinator this past winter.

It is possible that the torpedo bat's real benefit is entirely psychological. Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe noted this, telling Bryan Hoch of MLB.com that the bat is "probably just a placebo."

Cody Bellinger, however, has a different take.

“The benefit for me is, I like the weight distribution,” the 2019 NL MVP told Hoch. “Personally, the weight is closer to my hands, so I feel as if it’s lighter in a way. For me, that was the biggest benefit. Obviously, the bigger the sweet spot, the bigger the margin for error."

If what Bellinger says is true, you would expect to see a little more bat speed among the five Yankees hitters who are known to be using the torpedo bat. And when comparing 2024 speeds to 2025 speeds, there is something there:

• Anthony Volpe: 69.3 mph to 71.8 mph, +2.5 difference
• Cody Bellinger: 69.0 mph to 71.4 mph, +2.4 difference
• Jazz Chisholm Jr.: 71.9 mph to 73.6 mph, +1.7 difference
• Austin Wells: 72.4 mph to 73.3 mph, +0.9 difference
• Paul Goldschmidt: 72.5 mph to 72.8 mph, +0.3 difference

This is exciting stuff, but not quite as exciting as these guys' contact metrics. Only Wells doesn't have a lower whiff rate relative to 2024, and only Goldschmidt's average exit velocity is not up.

What We Don't Know...And Why It Might Not Matter

There is another variable in the Yankees' opening-weekend power party, and it has nothing to do with their bats and everything to do with the Brewers' arms.

Instead of wiping the slate clean against the Kansas City Royals on Monday, the Brewers served up 11 more runs. They also didn't show the Yankees much in the way of heat, averaging an MLB-low 91.5 mph on their fastballs. So while it may be true that torpedo bats allow for more bat speed, the jury is out as to whether that translates to better success against high velocity.

Also, two words: short porch (repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat).

There is also the unintended consequences question. The Hoch article referenced above mentions that Giancarlo Stanton used a torpedo bat during the 2024 season. He's currently sidelined with elbow injuries that he attributes to "bat adjustments." If that's not a red flag, it's at least a pink bandana.

All the same, torpedo bats are already spreading beyond New York. Chris Cwik of Yahoo Sports identified eight other hitters who are in the experiment. Among them is Baltimore Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman, who homered twice on Opening Day.

More hitters are sure to follow, for reasons that San Diego Padres star Manny Machado summed up on Sunday Night Baseball:

As if on cue, getting in on the torpedo bat craze on Monday was Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz. He went 4-for-5 with two home runs, totaling some 854 in distance.

It isn't hard to imagine a scenario in which a growing body of evidence indicates that there isn't actually much benefit to using the torpedo bat. If so, the genie could effectively get stuffed back in the bottle and the whole torpedo bat could come to look like a silly craze in retrospect. Think Beanie Babies, except wood.

For now, though, the excitement is obviously palpable and seemingly well-founded. After years and years and years of losing ground to pitchers, hitters may finally have what they need to literally go on the offensive.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference, FanGraphs and Baseball Savant.