Anyone who has followed the MLB as of recently has surely heard the phrase “torpedo bats” tossed around at one point or another. Most fans were exposed to the latest innovation in the baseball world when the New York Yankees crushed a franchise-high nine home runs, in a victory over the Milwaukee Brewers in their second game of the season.
Much of the Yankees’ starting lineup — Austin Wells, Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger, Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm Jr. — all upgraded their batting game with the bowling pin-shaped bats, and now other players around the league are following their lead.
Cincinnati Reds shortstop Elly De La Cruz made the switch early in the season, and his impact was immediate — he launched two home runs in his first game after the change.
“It feels good. It feels really good,” De La Cruz told the press after the game.
The bats, created by current Miami Marlins field coordinator Aaron Leanhardt, are designed to move the thickest part of the bat lower down the barrel by approximately six to seven inches.
As a result of moving the bat’s center of gravity lower down the barrel, hitters are able to increase their swing speed and hit in a more preferred “sweet spot” that is closer to the body. But, as Leanhardt himself observed, the shape of the bat is not an automatic cheat code to slugging.
“At the end of the day, it’s about the batter, not the bat […]. I’m happy to always help those guys get a little bit better, but ultimately it’s up to them to put good swings on good pitches and grind it out every day,” Leanhardt said.
Leanhardt, who has a doctorate in physics from MIT and is also a former professor of physics at the University of Michigan, is the brains behind the creation and no stranger to the world of baseball. In May 2018, Leanhardt joined the Yankees minor league team as a hitting coach, before becoming an analyst in the majors in January 2024.
As he focused on every technical aspect of increasing his players’ chances of putting a ball into play, Leanhardt quickly learned that the method behind the baseball bat needed to be reconsidered.
“You show up every day, you put the glove on you’re given, swing the bat that you’re given, you put the spikes on that you’re given and you go about your day as best as you can, and every now and then, it takes time to question what you’re doing. Couple of years ago, some of the hitters started questioning what they were doing and I just kind of responded to their questions,” Leanhardt said.
Although some players have only now made them their go-to, the torpedo bat has been around the league since at least 2023. In fact, Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor had been using a version of the torpedo bat throughout the 2024 season, a season in which he finished second in the National League MVP vote. Players that have started using torpedo bats this year include Baltimore Orioles catcher Adley Rutschman, Tampa Bay’s third baseman Junior Caminero, Pittsburgh Pirates center fielder Oneil Cruz and others.
But whether more of the league’s players will make the change in bat remains a question in itself. Reigning American League MVP and Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge has notably made the decision not to switch batting models.
Within the Yankees’ first seven games, Judge has hit a league-leading six home runs and shows no signs of stopping as he marches towards potentially breaking his personal record of 62 home runs in a single season.
“What I did the past couple of seasons speaks for itself. Why try to change something if you have something that’s working,” Judge commented.
In a recent Los Angeles Dodgers game, third baseman Max Muncy had been 0-3 while using the torpedo bat, so he chose to return to his old bat, which resulted in a two-run scoring double. Muncy’s decision reflects an important thing to keep in mind about how torpedo bats will be received by the majority of today’s professional baseball players: cautiously.
Nonetheless, MLB teams are still excited to get prototypes of the bats for their players to try. Jeremy Zoll, assistant general manager of the Minnesota Twins, expressed the hype clearly.
“It’s all the rage right now, given what transpired over the weekend. I’m sure more and more guys are going to experiment with it as a result, just to see if it’s something they like,” Zoll said.
The choices a batter can make with their bats — how heavy or light they want their bat, what material they want used in its making, how thick they want the bat’s handle to be — have always been available to baseball players, and in every design of a bat, there is always a trade-off between one factor and another.
Torpedo bats are not going to work for everyone, but for those who are looking for what the bat has to offer (a lower sweet spot, faster swing speed, etc.), the torpedo bat will benefit them greatly. In addition, it’ll be exciting to see how the MLB will treat this “shift in the balance” between pitching and hitting, and how players’ statistical performances will play out in the remainder of the season.
