The baseball world is well aware of the Yankees’ torpedo bats.
But that doesn’t mean other teams will be able to replicate them.
The bowling-pin-shaped bats became the talk of MLB thanks to the Yankees’ home-run barrage over the weekend, during which five players went deep using the torpedo model.
“But I don’t know that necessarily everyone knows about it,” manager Aaron Boone said before Tuesday night’s series opener against the Arizona Diamondbacks in the Bronx.
Surely, everyone has heard about the bats?
“Yeah, but that’s different than knowing,” Boone said.
The torpedo bats are the brainchild of Aaron Leanhardt, an MIT physicist who served as a minor league hitting coordinator with the Yankees before he became the Miami Marlins’ major league field coordinator this season.
The bats feature elongated barrels, which can help hitters make hard contact more regularly.
Cody Bellinger, Paul Goldschmidt, Austin Wells, Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm Jr. all homered using torpedo bats during the Yankees’ season-opening sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers.
The craze commanded so much attention that opposing teams and players have put orders in for their own torpedo models.
“I think there’s a lot more that goes into it than just, ‘I’ll take the 34”, 32” torpedo bat over there. Give me Bellinger’s bat.’ A lot went into doing that for our individual guys, and it’s a lot more than the look of the bat,” Boone said.
“Our guys are way more invested in it than that. Really personalized. Really worked with our players in creating this stuff. It is equipment evolving.”
The Yankees tied an MLB record with 15 home runs in their first three games. Nine of those homers were struck by a player using a torpedo bat.
Notably, Aaron Judge — a two-time American League MVP and three-time home-run champion — did not use the model. He hit four home runs in that three-game series.
“You’re trying to just, where you can on the margins, move the needle a little bit, and that’s really all you’re gonna do,” Boone said. “I don’t think this is some revelation. … It’s not related to the weekend we had, for example. I don’t think it’s that. Maybe in some cases, for some players, it may help them incrementally.”
The bats are not new this season, nor are they unique to the Yankees.
Giancarlo Stanton used the model last year, including during the playoffs when he hit seven home runs in 14 games.
Jose Trevino, whom the Yankees traded to the Cincinnati Reds this offseason, also used the bats last year and informed his new teammates about them during spring training. Reds star Elly De La Cruz hit two home runs and recorded seven RBI on Monday — his first time using a torpedo bat.
Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor is also using one.
And there are surely more to come.
“Hopefully what doesn’t get lost in this is [that] it’s about the player,” Boone said. “It’s about the hitter. It’s about the person swinging it. Understandably, I get it, it’s getting a lot of attention right now. But ultimately, when the dust settles here, it’s about players performing.”
