WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — Chicago Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson is known for his routine and sticking with what works for him.
That extends to the bat he uses. Well, at least it did. Swanson has been consistently using the new “torpedo” bat in games this season, along with second baseman Nico Hoerner. Other Cubs hitters have tested it out to varying degrees in non-game environments. First baseman Michael Busch is among them, though he said he didn’t notice much of a difference and as of now doesn’t plan to use one.
The model’s torpedo moniker is inspired by the barrel’s unique design that features a more bulky area intended to increase contact on the sweet spot of the bat.
Swanson started testing Marucci’s torpedo bat in the offseason and spring training before committing to trying it for one or two at-bats in Cactus League games. As Swanson put it, “You can’t knock it until you try it.” Swanson was using the bat when he homered Sunday and Monday, the latter part of back-to-back home runs with Michael Busch in the Cubs’ 18-3 win against the Athletics at Sutter Health Park.
“You’ve got to have a legitimate sample size — buying into understanding that there are some good results that can come from it, and it just pushed me to start trying to use it a little bit more often,” Swanson told the Tribune on Monday. “All the data and everything behind it obviously supports that it works. They’ve done a lot of working on trying to make sure that it’s as identical to whatever normal model we’ve swung in our careers, so I give them a lot of props for that.
“There’s nothing that anyone’s doing that’s against bat regulations,” Swanson said. “It’s just a different way of creating something. I think it’s a cool thing that ideology has been challenged a little bit.”
While the torpedo bat gained attention when some New York Yankees were spotted using them as the offense put up 20 runs and slugged a club-record nine home runs in their win Saturday over Milwaukee, its existence wasn’t exactly a big secret to teams, at least not the Cubs.
Hitting coach Dustin Kelly told the Tribune on Sunday that the organization has known about this bat prototype for a while and had even done some internal research and testing. He first started hearing talk about it toward the end of last season.
The bulkier barrel of the torpedo bat moves some of the “sweet spot” material down to potentially maximize hits off the barrel. Kelly said they are still trying to figure out the bat’s potential impact on mechanics — there isn’t a ton of data yet because not many players have used them in games. But the idea is to make the torpedo bat feel the same as a player’s typical, traditional bat.
“We’ve looked at baseball bats the same way since we were 3 years old, you pick up a bat and it’s looked the same outside of like a big T-ball bat or something so the visual part of it is really tricky, like, how’s this gonna work?” Kelly said. “But when you actually kind of think about it and they explain to you why it’s made that way and what the benefits are, it makes a ton of sense.
“It’s like if you had a (golf) driver for three years and you went and bought the new one, it’s going to feel different in your hands. Are guys willing to get over that part and give it an extended run to see if there are some batted ball metrics that are better?”
Hoerner has tried ...
