By Justin Stulpe
A forward-thinking modification to the traditional baseball bat has been the topic of discussion in the world of professional baseball to begin the 2025 season. This discourse has centered around the emergence of how certain big league ball clubs have given their players a perceived advantage to fit a specific player’s strengths by altering the original form of a normal baseball bat to a slightly altered version to allow the players to hit better.
These new modified bats dubbed, “torpedo bats,” have taken the league by storm with many people posing a few questions, including: What is a torpedo bat, how does it help batters that use them and are these bats even legal?
This modified torpedo-style bat essentially takes the normal size and weight of a traditional-style major league bat and redistributes the wood in a slightly different shape in an attempt to make the fattest part of the bat, or the “sweet spot,” bigger. In comparison to the normal bats, whose sweet spot is more towards the end of the bat, these torpedo bats have been changed to move some of the mass lower down the barrel to where some specific players make contact the most to try and maximize the contact they make on that portion of the bat.
Although this technology is not brand new this season, as the discourse emerged as a result of the New York Yankees exploding for nine home runs in one game on March 29, with five of these long balls coming off of the bat from players who used these torpedo bats. En route to this 20-9 throttling of the Milwaukee Brewers, many fans online began to notice the unusual bats that star players like Cody Bellinger and Jazz Chisholm Jr. were swinging to achieve these homers.
Despite fans from around the league scrambling to accuse the Yankees of cheating by using these altered bats, it was uncovered that these bats were not only legal by every MLB rule, but this seemingly groundbreaking discovery was first created by not a baseball-savvy front office worker, but rather an MIT-educated physics professor.
Aaron Leanhardt was previously a professor at the University of Michigan before getting into professional baseball with the Yankees, where he was presented with the task of trying to get batters to create better, more quality contact while the pitchers of the league become more and more unhittable by the year.
While thinking of a way to give hitters more of an advantage in the box, he concluded that the barrel needs to be bigger in order to generate more contact in general along with better contact when the ball is struck. However, that is much easier said than done because these bats need to abide by MLB rules that detail the absolute largest the barrel of a bat could be, but Leanhardt came up with a genius workaround for specific players.
Leanhardt examined hitter swing data from previous seasons and took note of where specific players struck the ball on the bat most commonly in their at-bats, and then decided to alter a normal MLB wooden bat and move some of the mass down to the part of the barrel where they made contact most commonly. For instance, Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe began using these torpedo bats this year after making contact with the ball more toward the handle of the bat, compared to the standard sweet spot located near the top end of a regular bat. Volpe began swinging a torpedo bat with the sweet spot moved down on the barrel and belted a homer in the game against the Brewers that sparked the discourse around torpedo bats.
Despite looking illegal due to their abstract shape and size of where the barrel is located, these bats are 100 percent legal and compliant with every regulation an MLB bat has to abide by. torpedo bats have the potential to become widespread across the league and one of the most important discoveries in baseball technology in a long time.
Albeit in a small sample size, players who have used these torpedo bats have demonstrated just how effective they could be when placed in suitable hands. In the 2024 postseason, Yankees designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton is thought to be one of the first players to take a considerable amount of at-bats with the torpedo-style bat and he demonstrated how this innovation can become advantageous for both the players and teams. Stanton clubbed seven long bombs throughout the 2024 Yankees postseason, a franchise record that demonstrates how people who can utilize this style of bat can be highly effective and even game changing.
From the March 29 home run barrage that the Yankees displayed against the Brewers to Stanton blasting a franchise record postseason home run record, it certainly details that the Yankees have implemented this new technology to their benefit. In due time, it is almost a certainty that teams will follow suit and implement these torpedo-style bats into their own organization. With every team having access to these bats could lead to some drastic changes to how baseball is played at the highest level.
As of now, torpedo bats are here to stay and may become even more ingrained into the fabric of how MLB baseball is played and perceived for years to come.
