Apr. 4—The home run derby the New York Yankees put on against the Milwaukee Brewers last Saturday attracted attention from all corners of baseball, including in the Portland Sea Dogs clubhouse.
It wasn't that the Yankees bashed a lot of balls out of the park. After all, their home ballpark, Yankee Stadium, is known as one of the best hitting parks in the major leagues. But it was how they did it, using a new style of bat that has hitters at all levels of baseball thinking of the long ball.
"I don't know how you can miss it at this point," said Tyler Miller, a corner infielder with the Sea Dogs.
The Yankees hit nine home runs last Saturday in their 20-9 win, a team record for homers in a game and one off the major league record set by the Toronto Blue Jays in 1987. While slugger and reigning American League Most Valuable Player Aaron Judge hit his three home runs Saturday with a traditional bat, other Yankees found success with a torpedo bat. The bats used by several of the Yankees feature a thicker barrel, so the densest part of the bat is where the hitter wants to make contact with the pitch — a sweeter sweet spot, if you will. The idea is that a well-struck pitch will be driven harder and farther.
With 22 home runs in their first six games, the Yankees are offering anecdotal proof that the torpedo bats, as they're called, might be worth a try. They caught the attention of Sea Dogs corner infielder Blaze Jordan, so much that he had his agents order him some.
A torpedo bat sells for around $200, not much more than a standard major league bat.
"We're going to see what they're like. The first couple series, we'll be using our (regular) bats until we get those bats in," said Jordan, who gained internet fame when he was 11 for hitting massive blasts in youth baseball home run derbies. "We'll see what happens. We're definitely looking forward to it and seeing how it goes, but either way, I think we're going to have a really good year."
The torpedo bats were designed by Aaron Leanhardt, a former Yankees coach who holds a PhD in physics from MIT. Now working for the Miami Marlins, Leanhardt told The Athletic the idea was to make the bat "as heavy and as fast as possible in the area where you're trying to do damage on the baseball."
They've actually been around for a few years, but the Yankees' power surge attracted new attention.
Despite the eyebrows raised by the look of the bats and the results the Yankees enjoyed swinging them, there's no question about the legality of the torpedo bats. MLB Rule 3.02 states that a bat "shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood." Torpedo bats are within those dimensions.
Sea Dogs manager Chad Epperson said he'd like to see a larger sample size before formulating an opinion on torpedo bats. Epperson noted the pitches the Yankees hit for home runs were grooved down the middle of the plate by Milwaukee pitchers, and major league hitters will drive mistakes deep with a bat or a broomstick. Epperson also noted that Yankee Stadium is one of the easiest big league ballparks in which to hit a home run. Since 2020, only Cincinnati's Great American Ballpark has seen more home runs than Yankee Stadium.
"I get the excitement of it. I'm not surprised it's the Yankees who are doing it. You go back to these highlights, these balls are center cut," Epperson said. "These are big leaguers, right? Big leaguers in the Bronx. I don't know if it's the torpedo bat or not, but I could be wrong."
Miller also said he's taking a wait-and-see approach.
"It's so ...
