WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The torpedo bats, which have taken the baseball world by storm at the start of this season, are not anything new. Giancarlo Stanton, for example, used them in the playoffs when he cracked seven homers during the New York Yankees’ run to the World Series last season.
“I’m a little curious how it took you guys so long to figure out we’re using it,” Chicago Cubs manager Craig Counsell said Tuesday at Sutter Health Park, pointing his finger directly at the media.
Even though reporters might not have been aware of the new bat, Counsell added that many of his own players knew about its existence. Veteran shortstop Dansby Swanson just didn’t get around to experimenting with it until this season.
“It’s caused quite a bit of disruption now,” Swanson said in an interview. “But it’s been more commonly known around the league than the public knew. Does that make sense? More players from different places have been using it and trying it for a while now. It just obviously blew up.”
Swanson said though the bat was certainly on his radar, he didn’t get serious about using it in game action until he spoke with some friends this offseason. He first swung the bat against live pitching during the season opening two-game series in Tokyo against the Los Angeles Dodgers last month.
“I started tinkering around with it,” Swanson said. “Some people I trust presented me with the idea of it. That it was all within regulations. I guess the analogy is golf clubs. We’ve evolved with golf clubs, and that’s helped the performance for some people. It just looks a little different than a traditional bat, but nobody’s ever challenged what a bat should look like.”
Now he’s comfortable with it. Swanson hit a homer in the first inning during the Cubs’ 18-3 drubbing of the Athletics on Monday night. After Wednesday’s series finale he’s hitting .222 with a pair of homers and six RBI.
“The idea behind it is to create more mass and density where you hit the ball most,” Swanson said when asked what he thinks the bat does for him.
The torpedo bat is tapered at the end and has more mass in the barrel than a traditional model, allowing some hitters a better chance to turn on an inside pitch. It’s well within Major League Baseball regulations, an MLB spokesman told Sportico last weekend.
As long as approved bat suppliers have adhered to the requirements in the rule book, MLB has traditionally not otherwise legislated bat dimensions and shapes within those restrictions, the Sportico story noted.
“It’s not that big a deal,” said A’s outfielder JJ Bleday, another player swinging the bowling pin-style bat. “It’s just a bat.”
So far this season, Bleday is hitting .192 with no homers and an RBI—proof that the bat isn’t an elixir for hitting woes, either.
It begs the question why it took so long for manufacturers like Louisville Slugger to develop this kind of bat. The torpedo bat was developed by an MIT physicist.
“Yeah, it’s science,” Counsell said. “ There haven’t been a lot of people willing to invest in it. They’ve worked on the types of finishes and the type of wood. They’re trying to get more exit velo off of that. There was ash against birch and maple. They’ve been trying things. That’s science. You try a lot of things until it produces results.”
The jury is still out on the shattering capability of the torpedo bats, Counsell said. Maple bats tend to splinter regularly sending shards like projectiles into the stands, while birch bats are more durable. MLB has since ordered netting installed down the lines for protection.
The torpedo bat?
“That’s yet to be seen, I think,” Counsell said. “There aren’t enough results. We don’t know yet.”
There’s not enough sample size for anybody to know about the bat’s overall effectiveness yet, either. But as the trend grows, time will soon tell.
