The Cubs Are Right Behind the Yankees on the Cutting Edge of the Torpedo Bat Revolution

The New York Yankees made headlines this weekend after they hit 15 home runs in their opening series against the Milwaukee Brewers. The headlines were both because those dingers tied the record for the most in a team’s first three games in MLB history, and because some of them were hit using new, torpedo-shaped bats. It turns out that the Cubs just might be using them, as well.

I was fortunate enough to miss the Cubs’ bullpen meltdown on Sunday afternoon, though I did, for whatever reason, subject myself to the highlights later that night. When watching the highlights, I noticed that Dansby Swanson’s bat certainly looked to have that same, slightly different shape that we saw in some of the Yankees' pieces of lumber over the weekend:

For reference, here is Swanson’s bat from a game from last season:

It was all but confirmed Monday, when an article in The Athletic chronicled the rise of this new weapon in the war between pitchers and hitters:

”’It seems to be like it’s making its way around MLB,’ said Los Angeles Angels infielder Nicky Lopez, who spent spring training with the Chicago Cubs, where he said they utilized the bats as well.”

What’s the big deal with these bats? Instead of the thickest part of the bat being up toward the end of the bat, the thickest part is slightly closer to the handle, where certain hitters tend to make contact with the ball most often. Here is a picture of a torpedo bat above a more standard bat:

The Athletic did some further reporting, and discovered that these bats were the idea of Aaron Leanhardt, a former MIT physicist who worked for the Yankees before taking a job with the Miami Marlins for this season. They also reported that these bats are legal, under the league's (surprisingly lax, for some) rules about the dimensions and shape of the bat.

One would think the results of something like this would show up in a statistic like exit velocity, but unfortunately for Swanson, that has not been the case so far. His 88.1 mph average exit velocity so far this season is slightly down from 89.4 mph last season, and his 41.2% hard-hit rate is a tick down from 42.7% last season. 

Still, it’s way too early to measure the results. It looked like Swanson wasn't even using the tapered stick when he hit his home run Monday night, but maybe that was just an adjustment based on what type of stuff he expected to see from each pitcher he faced. Personally, I think that something like this would make a negligible difference, and if the difference does turn out to be that great, everyone will be swinging these bats within a couple of months, anyway. Either way, it’s nice to see the Cubs being an early adopter of something that could help them win baseball games. Their bats, in whatever shape, delivered plenty of loud contact Monday night in West Sacramento.