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During Spring Training before the start of the 2023 season, Aaron Leanhardt, who was the New York Yankees’ minor league hitting coordinator and who has a doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), asked himself how the team’s offense could keep up in an era seemingly ruled by good pitching.
The consensus answer among players on how to combat the surge in pitching prosperity was simple: make more contact. Leanhardt hypothesized that by making the “sweet spot,” the part of the bat hitters try to make contact with, longer, players would make more contact, therefore increasing the total amount of offense.
Leanhardt and a number of the 41 MLB-approved bat manufacturers then came together to create the bats now known as “torpedo bats.” Somehow, Leinhardt engineered the bats to still fall within the MLB regulations that a bat cannot be more than 2.61 inches in diameter and 42 inches in length.
The first MLB player known to use a torpedo bat was Yankees slugger
Giancarlo Stanton during the 2024 postseason. During the season, Stanton had a .272 batting average (meaning he got a hit nearly 30% of the time), but using the new torpedo bat, he crushed four home runs in just five games in the American League Championship Series.
However, Stanton has not played yet this season due to an elbow injury caused by apparent “batting stance adjustments.” Could this be chalked down to the unorthodox construction of the torpedo bats, or is Stanton deflecting the blame of the injury onto the bat? No other player has suffered a bat-related injury this season, torpedo or not, so we will have to wait to see whether the weight distribution carries a toll on player health.
The Yankees, although without the injured Stanton and torpedo bat inventor Leanhardt, who departed to become the field coordinator for the Miami Marlins, hit nine home runs in their first home game of 2025 vs. the Milwaukee Brewers on March 27.
Out of the five players to send a ball into the stands, only reigning AL MVP Aaron Judge was not using a torpedo bat.
Since the start of the 2025 season, many players have used a torpedo bat and subsequently had notable performances.
Cincinnati Reds star Elly De La Cruz used the bat in a 14-3 rout of the Texas Rangers, getting four hits in five at-bats, with two homers and a double to go along with seven runs batted in. He was only a triple away from the coveted cycle, which would have been the second time he would have hit for the milestone in his career.
After De La Cruz’s historic night, his notorious agent, Scott Boras, said that he had personally ordered a torpedo bat from the Louisville Slugger bat company for De La Cruz to try out, and said even though he used the bat, the performance was “not the noodle—it’s the chef.”
The new Reds manager, Terry Francona, also overlooked the bat, instead putting the spotlight on De La Cruz.
“I think it’s more the player than the bat,” Francona said in an interview with MLB.com.
The bat hasn’t single-handedly caused one team to take over the league for more than a couple of games, but the effect on the league has been large enough to cause complaints from players and fans alike.
Barstool Sports founder and diehard Boston Red Sox fan Dave Portnoy went on a rant about the bats on X after the Yankees’ success, complaining that the bats should be banned.
“If you get jammed and it’s a home run, that doesn’t mean you suddenly got better; that’s just some geek from MIT, some physicist ruining 100 years of baseball, or 200 years of baseball,” Portnoy said.
MLB players have split opinions on the topic, with some, such as Kansas City Royals outfielder Mark Canha, defending the bats when asked if they should be legal.
“I feel like we need all the help we can get,” Canha said in an interview with ESPN. “These guys are throwing so hard now. But it’s not a cheat code. We’ll see how it plays out over a little bigger sample size.”
Players, coaches or anyone in the baseball world can complain about the pitching or argue that it would make the game more exciting however much they like, but the torpedo bats will end up ruining a sport with such a long, storied history.
Baseball isn’t meant to be a sport where every game is exciting and jam-packed with offense. If all 2,430 games in the MLB season were exciting, then something else would need to be talked about. Each team’s schedule should provide about 40-60 good games with about 10 thrillers per year, and that’s the way the game should be played.
In some ways, watching ace pitchers like the Reds’ Hunter Greene flirt with a no-hitter is so much more exciting than watching Aaron Judge tank three home runs a game. Even getting into the third time through the batting order scoreless is a vastly underrated experience compared to seeing a player constantly raking hits every single game.
There is a reason that baseball has been America’s pastime for nearly 160 years, and it does not suddenly need an injection of offense. Keep the game the way things are, and let the future fall into place. That’s not to say that recent rule changes like the pitch clock system haven’t been great, but chaotic adjustments like the torpedo bats are bound to end badly.