Torpedo bats could revolutionize baseball and players are taking notice

The New York Yankees smashed 15 home runs in their first three games of the 2025 Major League Baseball season last week, largely thanks to a brand new tool: torpedo bats. These revolutionary new bats, which alter the design of the bat's wooden barrel, have other teams around the league taking notice and wondering if this could have a lasting impact on baseball.

While other types of modified bats, such as corked bats, are strictly forbidden in the major leagues, MLB has already confirmed that torpedo bats are legal and allowed; the league itself has even released news articles highlighting them. This could pave the way for a new era of baseball, one in which home-run hitters take precedence.

Lower barrel

Unlike a traditional bat, on torpedo bats the wooden portion starts further down the barrel, moving the "wood toward the sweet spot of the bat, where players try to make contact and where the bat will produce optimal results," said USA Today. This gives the torpedo bat a "slightly different shape than a traditional one," and this "redistribution of weight moves the 'barrel' area slightly toward the hands, rather than toward the end of the bat."

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The theory is that this redistribution allows batters to hit the denser, sweet spot of the bat more often, which in turn creates more hits — a shift the Yankees have clearly exploited. So the torpedo bat "isn't an automatic cheat code for a home run like the Yankees have made it seem, but it could be the tweak some hitters need to improve their performance at the plate," said Sports Illustrated.

'Other teams can do it too'

The bat was created because players "wanted to make more contact with pitches and they wanted to strike the ball more often," Aaron Leanhardt, an MIT physicist turned baseball coach who invented the torpedo bat, said to The Athletic. In "some sense, you can have your cake and eat it here too. You can get some gains without actually making sacrifices."

The Yankees have been the breakout users of the torpedo bat so far, but other clubs could follow, making the bats the norm. "Other teams can do it too. It's not just us," Yankees prospect Jasson Dominguez said to Fox Sports. But the opinion among major league players seems to be split on the bats.

Players are "doing everything to try to get an edge today legally, and I think they should. I think whatever is good for the offensive game is good for the game," Milwaukee Brewers manager Pat Murphy said to Yahoo Sports. Murphy had this opinion even after the Yankees hit nine home runs in a March 29 game against his Brewers. Others were not on board. "It's terrible — I feel like it's something used in slow-pitch softball," Brewers reliever Trevor Megill said to the outlet. It "might be bush league. It might not be."

Nevertheless, the trend is slowly creeping into other clubs. The "Twins' catcher Ryan Jeffers and the Rays' Junior Caminero and Yandy Díaz were also spotted using torpedo bats in Spring Training and over opening weekend," said CNN. The bats are likely here to stay, as a "lot of teams are doing that around the league," Baltimore Orioles hitting coach Cody Asche said to MLB.com. If you "were around the clubhouse, all 30 teams, you would see a guy or two that's kind of adopting a bat that's kind of fashioned more specifically to their swing."