KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. — A 70-year-old man who plays in an area senior hardball league popped into Victus Sports this week because he needed bats for the new season. Plus he just had to take some cuts with baseball’s latest fad and see for himself if there really was some wizardry in the wallop off a torpedo bat.
Ed Costantini, of Newtown Square, picked up the custom-designed VOLPE11-TPD Pro Reserve Maple, and took his hacks just like MLB stars and Victus customers Anthony Volpe or Bryson Stott would inside the company’s batting cage and tracked the ball’s path on the virtual Citizens Bank Park on the computer screens.
Most big leaguers use that often indistinguishable “feel” as a qualifier as to how they select a bat.
Costantini had a similar process and thought the hype surrounding the torpedo since it exploded into the baseball consciousness this season was a “hoax.” But after dozens of swings in the cage, the left-handed hitter ordered on the spot four custom-crafted torpedo bats at $150 a pop.
“The litmus test that I used was, I could see where the marks of the ball were,” Costantini said. “The swings were hitting the thickness of the torpedo as opposed to the end of the bat.”
More than just All-Stars want a crack at the torpedo — a striking design in which wood is moved lower down the barrel after the label and shapes the end a little like a bowling pin — and Costantini’s purchase highlighted the surge of interest in baseball’s shiny new toy outside the majors.
Think of home runs in baseball, and the fan’s mind races to the mammoth distances a ball can fly when slugged right on the nose, or a history-making chase that captivates a nation.
Of lesser interest, the ol’ reliable wood bat itself.
That was, of course, until Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger hit back-to-back homers for the New York Yankees on March 29 with the Victus Sports bat.
The Yankees crowed about the torpedo-shape concept that had baseball buzzing — and pitchers grumbling.
Victus spent most of the last 14 years trying to help shape the future of baseball. The company’s founders just never imagined that shape would resemble a bowling pin.
“It was the most talked about thing about bats that we ever experienced,” Victus co-founder Jared Smith said.
Victus isn’t the only company producing the bulgy bats, but they were among the first to list them for sale online after the Yankees’ made them the talk of the sports world.
“The amount of steam that it’s caught, this quickly, that’s certainly surprising,” Smith said. “If the Yankees hitting nine home runs in a game doesn’t happen, this doesn’t happen.”
Victus was stamped this season as the official bat of Major League Baseball and business was already good: Phillies slugger Bryce Harper is among the stars who stick their bats on highlight reels.
But that torpedo-looking hunk of lumber? It generated about as much interest last season in baseball as a .200 hitter. Victus made its first torpedoes around 2024 spring training when the Yankees reached out about crafting samples for their players. Victus, as dialed-in as anyone in the bat game, only made about a dozen last season, and about a dozen more birch or maple bats this spring.
On a good day, Victus makes 600-700 bats, but the influx of pro orders — the company estimates at least half of every starting lineup uses Victus or Marucci bats — has sent production into overdrive.
Here’s the surprising part of the torpedo bat: For all its early hype, the bat is no rookie in the game.
The lethal lumber has been used by some sluggers in baseball for at least a year or two only, well, no one really noticed. Giancarlo Stanton and Francisco Lindor used torpedoes last season. Other players experimented with it and no one — not the bulk of other players or journalists or fans — ever really picked up on the newfangled advance in hitting innovation.
“I think it’s just one of those things that until you’re looking for it, you might not see it,” Smith said. “Now when you look at pictures, you’re like, oh yeah, it’s a torpedo.”
MLB has relatively uncomplicated bat rules, stating under 3.02: “The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood.” It goes on to state there may be a cupped indentation up to 1 1/4 inches in depth, 2 inches wide and with at least a 1-inch diameter, and experimental models must be approved by MLB.
The torpedo is 100% legal.
Not all hitters are believers — or at least feel like they need to tinker with their lumber.
Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, who hit an AL-record 62 homers in 2022 and 58 last year en route to his second AL MVP award, declined to try the new bat, asking, “Why try to change something?” Phillies All-Star shortstop Trea Turner said the hoopla was “blown out of proportion.”
“You’ve still got to hit the ball,” Turner said.
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