The early story of the MLB season across big-league clubhouses has been the torpedo bats. Though the bat design isn't necessarily new, the Yankees' season-opening homer barrage was impossible to ignore.
It got to the point where some fans wanted MLB to step in and outlaw the bats. But judging from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred's comments, the torpedo bats are here to stay.
Manfred spoke to The New York Times over the weekend, and he explained that he saw the torpedo bat as a positive for baseball. After all, MLB wants offense. It wants excitement — we've seen that with recent rule changes. There's no way Manfred would ban a legal bat with that in mind.
He said via The New York Times:
They’re absolutely good for baseball. I believe that issues like the torpedo bat and the debate around it demonstrate the fact that baseball still occupies a unique place in our culture, because people get into a complete frenzy over something that’s really nothing at the end of the day.
The bats comply with the rules. Players have actually been moving the sweet spot around in bats for years. But it just demonstrates that something about the game is more important than is captured by television ratings or revenue or any of those things, when you have the discussions and debates about it.
It doesn't get more definitive than that. The torpedo bats aren't going anywhere.
This article originally appeared on For The Win: Rob Manfred gave an adamant response about the torpedo bat’s place in MLB games
