Baseball's Newest Innovation: The Torpedo Bat

Credit: Pamela Smith/Associated Press

We are nearly two weeks into the 2025 MLB season, and baseball has already provided sports fans with a trending topic. It is called the torpedo bat, and the New York Yankees have used this new piece of lumber to drill an MLB record 25 home runs in their first eight games of the season. What is a torpedo bat and what is all the hype about? Let’s find out why.

A torpedo bat is crafted with more wood on the barrel of the bat than a traditional bat, otherwise known as the “sweet spot”. The increase of wood on the bat makes the barrel of the bat thicker, flaring the wood from the neck of the bat at a sharper angle. The flare gives the bat its profitable name and shape. The idea was thought of by former Yankees minor league hitting coordinator Aaron Leanhardt, who was in the organization from 2022 to 2023. The concept of baseball’s newest innovation is to give hitters more room for error when they make contact on the barrel, which results in higher exit velocities.

The torpedo bat first hit the airwaves when the New York Yankees hit a franchise record nine home runs in a 20-9 rout of the Milwaukee Brewers on March 29th. The Yankees play-by-play announcer, Michael Kay, mentioned the Bronx Bombers newest tool on the Yankees’ telecast. Baseball fans immediately were skeptical if the Yankees were cheating, but according to Rule 3.02 in the MLB rule book, it states that bats cannot be more than 2.61 inches in diameter and 42 inches in length. Once analyzed, the MLB confirmed that the torpedo bat was in fact legal. What makes it such a big story is that this is the first time bat manufacturers took advantage of MLB’s loose restrictions of the technicalities of bat size. Most bat manufacturers promote the density of their barrel, but this is the first time they have tinkered with the size of the barrel of a game bat. 

The torpedo bat is finding its way in clubhouses across the league, and stars like Elly De La Cruz, Adley Rutschman, and Francisco Lindor are swinging the newest weapon of choice at the dish. Let’s see if the torpedo bat will lead to an offensive explosion in 2025.

Thank you for reading!

-Elias Meredith (@EAM_55)