The torpedo bat, introduced at the start of the 2025 MLB season, was highly successful, helping the New York Yankees hit nine home runs in their second game and 15 total in a three-game series against the Milwaukee Brewers.
The bat, developed by former MIT physicist and current field coordinator of the Miami Marlins, Aaron Leanhardt in 2023 while working for the Yankees, is different from other common baseball bats because the barrel has more substance in the middle, as opposed to a traditional top heavy design. The more even weight distribution allows the ball to gain more power off the barrel, which, experts say, can increase players’ power.
The torpedo bat compared to a normal bat.
At this point, only a minority of players are using the bat because supplies are low; more players are expected to experiment as the year goes on.
With the torpedo bat, the Yankees had a massive power run, leading the league with 38 home runs and establishing a MLB record of 17 home runs in the first four games of the season.
This success led fans to wonder if the bat should be legal. According to current MLB rules, the bat is legal, which incentivized more teams to use torpedo bats. According to Fox Sports, 20 players from 12 MLB teams are currently using torpedo bats, five of which are from the Yankees.
As for the pitchers, while there was initial frustration over the effectiveness of the torpedo bat, they still found weaknesses within the design.
According to former MLB pitcher Pedro Martinez, the torpedo bat exposes the thinner edges of the bat, allowing pitchers to pitch more around the edges of the strike zone. This aligns with the fact that most of the home runs hit by the Yankees were from pitches that were not located accurately in the strike zone, meaning that the pitches ended up in the middle of the strike zone, making them easier to hit. The larger barrel of the torpedo bat exploited those weaknesses, as the larger barrel enabled more power, leading to the barrage of home runs.
With the torpedo bat, pitchers are now punished more for a bad pitch and rewarded more for a good one, as it is now harder for batters to hit pitches at the edge of their reach.
Overall, the new bats are expected to improve gameplay. “They’re [torpedo bats] are absolutely good for baseball,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said in an interview with The New York Times. After years of pitchers and defense dominating the game and baseball viewership declining rapidly, the torpedo bat may be the spark needed for more entertainment in baseball.
