There’s buzz at the beginning of the 2025 Major League Baseball season about new bats in the Yankees lineup. The torpedo bat design theoretically increases barrels and reduces whiff rate, similar to a boosted sweet spot in amateur bats. Whether the hype is justified or not will play out over the course of the season, but the Yankees are leading baseball in most batting categories early in the season, including 15 homers in their first three games.
Torpedo Bats Explained
One of the main reasons for a custom bat design was a review of Anthony Volpe’s batting performance. He consistently hits the ball near the label of the bat and not further out on the barrel. To compensate for this, the bat design has more wood weight near the label, which theoretically translates to harder hit balls. It also means the bat design has a bulbous shape expanding from the handle and receding as it approaches the end of the bat.
Who manufactures torpedo bats?
The bat design is attributed to Aaron Leanhardt, who is currently a coach for the Miami Marlins. Many of the bats used by the Yankees have the Louisville Slugger stamp on them, which suggests that manufacturing company Hillerich & Bradsby Company make many of the torpedo shaped bats. Wilson Sporting Goods is the company that uses the Louisville Slugger brand on baseball bats.
Another manufacturer of torpedo bats is Victus, who created the Anthony Volpe model pictured below. The bat features a cone handle and their Torpedo1 barrel in maple.
Are Torpedo Bats Legal?
The Yankees wouldn’t be on the field with bats that were illegal for play. The American League and MLB generally would catch on quickly to that. The key qualities of a bat that make them legal are a maximum diameter of 2.61 inches at the thickest part of the bat and a maximum length of 42 inches. Bats used by Yankees players meet both criteria.
Are Torpedo Bats a Game Changer?
Volpe isn’t the only Yankee adopting the new torpedo bat design this year. If you’ve watched the Yankees this year, you’ve seen Jazz Chisholm Jr., Paul Goldschmidt, Austin Wells, and Cody Bellinger are also on board with the new design. Collectively those five players have nine homers over three games. The Yankees That’s too small a sample size to know if it’s the bats, early pitching mistakes at the start of the season, or something else. One notable player sticking with his old bat is Aaron Judge. He’s already got four homers on his own in those three games, which suggests that it’s more likely the player than the bat making the difference.
It remains to be seen whether the torpedo design is revolutionary in the same way the axe handle bats turned out to be or if they prove to be a temporary experiment.
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