The talk of Major League Baseball’s opening weekend was the New York Yankees’ bats, and “bats” here isn’t a figurative way to talk about the insane 36 runs off 34 hits, including 15 homers, the team notched in their first three games. Instead, the conversation is focused on the literal shape of the bats some on the Yankees used to produce those eye-popping numbers.
The conversation is focused on the shape of the bats some on the Yankees used to produce those eye-popping numbers.
The Yanks seem to have created an edge by — gasp — innovating. Several of their stars (notably excluding Aaron Judge, who leads the team in hits, home runs, on-base percentage, RBIs and batting average) are swinging a so-called torpedo bat, which uses a manufacturing tweak to shift some of a traditional bat’s mass a few inches in toward the batter. Instead of the bats we’re used to seeing that are skinny on one end and heavy on the other, these bats look flatter because more of their mass is concentrated in the zone most likely to make contact with a pitch, theoretically giving hitters more power without changing anything else.
Early results say the Yankees’ scheme is working: They’re undefeated through three games, having outscored the Milwaukee Brewers 36-14 in their opening series.
And now, the question being asked in the sports-talkosphere is “Are the Yankees cheating?” Is changing the shape of a baseball bat the same as corking one, which once earned Sammy Sosa a suspension? Does it line up with players’ using performance enhancing drugs, signal stealing or pitchers’ tampering with a ball?
MLB’s rules, at least at this point, say no. Each team is responsible for supplying its own bats, and beyond restrictions governing diameter and length — a bat can be no more than 2.61 inches at its thickest part and no longer than 42 inches —teams appear to be free to tinker with the lumber. But until now, no team has — at least not to any great effect.
It may not technically be cheating, but it’s hard to view the Yankees’ subterfuge as consistent with baseball’s enduring — but no less phony — mythology as a game for purists in which even minor innovations risk sullying the game. This is the same sport that long after yielding the mantle of “America’s Pastime” to the NFL still refuses to approve the use of an electronic strike zone and greenlit instant replay only this millennium, the last of the big four American sports leagues to do so.
It’s the same sport that egregiously shuns Barry Bonds, the best player of his era and the king of sending balls out of the park, because he’s been suspected of having used performance-enhancing drugs, even though MLB looked the other way and raked in profits as Bonds’ home runs boosted ratings.
The Yankees, in particular, help drive baseball’s cornball myth-making. There’s a rich irony in a team that won’t put players’ last names on their jerseys and didn’t until this season allow those players to wear beards modifying their bats — even if legally. The Yankees are perhaps baseball’s poster child for propping up its aggressive nostalgia by resisting innocuous changes. But here they are, messing with the bat, of all things, to their advantage on the field.
Is nothing sacred?
Apparently not. MIT-trained physicist Aaron Leanhardt, whom the Yankees hired for their coaching staff in 2022, reportedly created the torpedo bats. Leanhardt jumped to the Miami Marlins in the offseason, but not before his bats were put into use by the Yankees last year. The Yankees aren’t the only ones. Players with the Cincinnati Reds, the Minnesota Twins, the Boston Red Sox, the Toronto Blue Jays, the Baltimore Orioles and the Tampa Bay Rays have reportedly either used the bats in game or tried them out.
As long as MLB holds that torpedo bats are all good, every team has an incentive to use them. That wouldn’t be the worst thing for a sport with a shrinking audience.
So, what should baseball do? As long as MLB holds that torpedo bats are all good by the rulebook, every team has an incentive to use them. That wouldn’t be the worst thing for a sport with a shrinking audience that all but guarantees that small market teams struggle to field competitive rosters. The Pittsburgh Pirates, for example, have the most exciting young pitcher in the sport in ace Paul Skenes, but their paltry $88 million payroll is less than a third of the Yankees’ $288.1 million in salaries this season, according to Spotrac.
With Judge and the rest of the pinstripes visiting PNC Park this weekend, why shouldn’t the Pirates try to even the odds with some torpedoes of their own?
If baseball ever hopes to reclaim its share of fans’ imaginations, it just might want to look the other way on this one, too.
