The New York Yankees had quite the Saturday, blasting nine home runs in a 20-9 win over the Milwaukee Brewers. And the bats used by many of their players caught the attention of the baseball world.
While Aaron Judge rocked three homers using his normal bat, a number of Yankees opted for the Torpedo bat, which was designed in part by former Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist Aaron Leanhardt and are notable for being densest at the barrel, or the “sweet spot” of the bat.
“Really, it’s just about making the bat as heavy and as fat as possible in the area where you’re trying to do damage on the baseball,” he told The Athletic’s Brendan Kuty.
“[Players are] going to point to a location on the bat that is probably six or seven inches down from the tip of the bat. That’s where the sweet spot typically is,” he added. “It’s just through those conversations where you think to yourself, ‘Why don’t we exchange how much wood we’re putting on the tip versus how much we’re putting in the sweet spot?’ That’s the original concept right there. Just try to take all that excess weight and try to put it where you’re trying to hit the ball and then in exchange try to take the thinner diameter that used to be at the sweet spot and put that on the tip.”
And before anybody begins suspecting an unfair competitive advantage is at play, an MLB spokesman confirmed to Kuty that the “torpedos” are legal under the current regulations for bats.
Also, the bats aren’t being universally adapted by the Yankees. Judge, for instance, isn’t making the switch:
Don’t be surprised if a number of players on other teams experiment with the new design, however.