{"id":26968,"date":"2025-07-21T20:53:16","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T20:53:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/26968\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T20:53:16","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T20:53:16","slug":"yankees-torpedo-bats-propel-team-to-record-breaking-start","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/26968\/","title":{"rendered":"Yankees torpedo bats propel team to record-breaking start"},"content":{"rendered":"

The biggest revelation from Major League Baseball\u2019s opening weekend <\/a>was not the Los Angeles Dodgers\u2019 5-0 dominance, the four home runs hit already by Eugenio Su\u00e1rez or Miami\u2019s three consecutive walk-off wins.<\/p>\n

Instead, the talk of baseball has been new, torpedo-shaped bats used by several members of the New York Yankees \u2014 and the league-leading offensive numbers they have produced.<\/p>\n

The Yankees have scored 36 runs, an MLB-high 22 more than their opponents, through three games, including a team-record nine home runs in Saturday\u2019s victory over Milwaukee. <\/p>\n

Of the five home runs allowed that day by Brewers starter Nestor Cortes, a former Yankee, four were hit by players using bats that eschew the thick-barreled shape used for generations and instead shift wood from the end of the bat closer to the middle, near its label.<\/p>\n

\"AA detailed view of Jazz Chisholm’s bat.Mike Stobe \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Awareness of the bats became a trending topic during Saturday\u2019s home run derby after Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay revealed the change was a result of a study by the team\u2019s analytics department of shortstop Anthony Volpe that found \u201cevery single ball it seemed like he hit on the label. He didn\u2019t hit any on the barrel.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSo they had bats made up where they moved a lot of the wood into the label so the harder part of the bat is going to actually strike the ball.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI know I\u2019m bought in,\u201d Volpe\u00a0told <\/a>The Associated Press<\/a>. \u201cThe bigger you can have the barrel where you hit the ball, it makes sense to me.\u201d<\/p>\n

The new bats are used by Volpe, Jazz Chisholm \u2014 who hit two home runs Sunday \u2014 Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger and Austin Wells. They have tallied nine homers in the team\u2019s first three games.<\/p>\n

Yankees manager Aaron Boone said it was an example of the team \u201ctrying to win on the margins.\u201d<\/p>\n

MLB has only seven stipulations governing bats in its official rule book, and the new shape does not appear to violate them.\u00a0Rules require bats<\/a> to be one piece of solid wood, a \u201csmooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length.\u201d Experimental bats are not allowed \u201cuntil the manufacturer has secured approval from Major League Baseball of his design and methods of manufacture.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s all within regulation,\u201d Bellinger, who has said he used similar bats during practice but not games last year with the Chicago Cubs, told the AP. \u201cThey made sure [of] that before the season even started, knowing that, I imagine, at some point the way these bats look that it\u2019s probably going to get out at some point.\u201d<\/p>\n

Where did the specific design come from?\u00a0<\/p>\n

In a\u00a0series of posts on X<\/a>, former Yankees infielder Kevin Smith credited Aaron Leanhardt, a former Yankees staffer now employed by the Miami Marlins, for the concept of shifting more wood and density to where hitters make contact most often. Leanhardt \u201cwould say \u20185-10 years from now this is all anyone will be using\u2019\u201d Smith posted.<\/p>\n

Before he worked in baseball, Leanhardt was a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Leanhardt told\u00a0The Athletic\u00a0<\/a>on Sunday that the idea was sparked while he was working with the Yankees\u2019 minor-league hitting department.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s just about making the bat as heavy and as fat as possible in the area where you\u2019re trying to do damage on the baseball,\u201d Leanhardt told The Athletic.<\/p>\n

By any measure, the Yankees have, indeed, done damage. They have hit for an MLB-high team average of .333 and added 11 home runs, one off the league lead. Not all of those gaudy statistics can be attributed to new bats, however. <\/p>\n

Aaron Judge, last season\u2019s home run champion, who has already hit four this season and batted in 11 runs, is among the Yankees who are non-torpedo-bat users.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat I did the past couple seasons speaks for itself,\u201d Judge said,\u00a0per the New York Post.<\/a>\u00a0\u201cWhy try to change something if you have something that\u2019s working?\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The biggest revelation from Major League Baseball\u2019s opening weekend was not the Los Angeles Dodgers\u2019 5-0 dominance, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":26969,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":["post-26968","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26968","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26968"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26968\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/26969"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26968"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26968"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26968"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}