By Blake Storts
The New York Yankees baseball team stirred up the beginning of the Major League Baseball (MLB) season by introducing a new type of baseball bat. Typically, the thickest part of the bat is situated at the end of the barrel, and this model has stayed unchanged throughout baseball history. However, the “torpedo bat” changes this, moving the thickest area to the middle of the bat. This shift allows hitters who tend to get jammed or handcuffed by inside pitches to hit the ball more effectively. The success comes from the fact that the wood is lower on the bat, making the contact more solid. This will allow players to hit the ball further, producing more base hits.
Although this season has seen a rise in torpedo bat popularity, the opening of MLB was not the first time the torpedo bat has been used by a Yankee. Giancarlo Stanton, a New York Yankees hitter and outfielder, used the bat in last year’s playoffs to a very effective degree. In fact, he hit seven home runs in 14 games.
The torpedo bat has won the Yankees a number of home runs, making the torpedo bat more appealing to other players. Several teams across the league are ordering the model in bulk in hopes of generating more offense for their hitters.
Kurt Ainsworth is the CEO of Marucci Sports, a sports equipment manufacturing company. When commenting on the new torpedo bat model, he said, “We have about 55% of major league players using our bats right now. And I would say about half of them have called in the past week asking for a torpedo model of their bat.”
The torpedo style is currently selling for around $180 in the United States, with the custom torpedo option available to most of the big baseball bat companies. Although the popularity has grown, there is also pushback. There are even talks of banning the bat, even though it technically falls in line with the MLB bat standards where the thickest area of the bat should be 2.61 inches. Only time will tell if these bats will become the mainstream, or simply be another quirk of the game.
