Torpedo bats are taking MLB by storm. The bowling-pin-shaped lumber is receiving credit for the New York Yankees’ early-season home run explosion, and the rest of the league is scrambling to keep up.
Washington Nationals general manager Mike Rizzo said on Wednesday that his club would start experimenting with the strange bat designs as soon as possible.
“We need to order a few,” Rizzo told “The Sports Junkies” on 106.7 The Fan. “I think we’re going to.”
The Yankees debuted the unique bat design when the season began last week. They soared out of the gates, slugging a league-best 18 homers in their first four games. The 4.5 dingers per game is more than twice as many as the next-closest team.
The bats are perfectly legal. A physicist employed by the Yankees proposed shifting the distribution of the bat’s mass toward the barrel.
The simple change has proven controversial, though.
“I think it’s terrible,” Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Trevor Megill told the New York Post. “We’ll see what the data says. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I feel like it’s something used in slow-pitch softball. It’s genius: Put the mass all in one spot. It might be bush [league]. It might not be.”
To the dismay of disgruntled pitchers, players from at least 10 different teams have used the bats this season. That number is only going to grow.
“I think it’s a kind of revolutionary idea. We’ll see if there’s a big assist on it. Really, all it’s doing is shifting more barrel space to a place that you often hit the ball,” Rizzo said. “Not everybody hits the ball on the sweet spot. It’s something that we are looking into.”
• Liam Griffin can be reached at lgriffin@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.