Outlaw the Torpedo Bat…
Baseball traditionalists like myself are having a stroke watching Vlope and Jazz actually make contact with this new bat and rightfully so. Again, you can’t just make a new bat and ruin over 100 years of baseball to allow guys to actually hit and not be a complete mess at the plate.
Dude what? They made a better bat. It’s not some gimmick just slightly different dimensions. Once everyone is on a level playing field so what? It’ll make baseball a bit more exciting.
It’s not even clear it’s a better bat. Sweet spot might be a little bigger, but there are lots of reasons why the Yankees might light up a team. And it’s not like “let’s move the centre of mass closer to the hands” is some kind of magical insight. There’s now way this hasn’t been done before.
We’ll need a much larger sample size than this to determine whether it’s actually better.
Judge hit 3 of those HRs without any torpedos. Maybe the pitcher was just having a bad day, and the bats didn’t matter?
Pretty sure they used them in spring training too, so there’s a larger sample size than just a few games.
Multiple teams have had these bats since LAST year. This isn’t new and isn’t a problem. People are just upset because they hate the Yankees and they scored a ton of runs.
Riffing off your point about Judge not using the torpedo bats that game. I learned the following from ex-MLB hitter Kevin Barker on the Blair and Barker podcast today.
Hitters of Judge’s calibre are unlikely to use torpedo bats. Torpedo bats are for helping players who tend to miss hitting the ball at the sweet spot of the bat - so the bat is designed differently to give more sweet spot to wherever it is they typically make contact (e.g., if it’s closer to the thumbs - make the bat wider there). Elite hitters don’t need this correction. Torpedo bats are poised to help less talented hitters, not the elite hitters. Torpedo bats, or custom bats in general, are also very expensive, so minor leaguers are unlikely to be able to afford them or use them
If a hitter is consistently getting the bat on the ball on one spot, but it’s not the conventional “sweet spot”, is that hitter really less talented?
I guess it depends on if you value OBP or SLG more.
If everyone uses em I don’t see the big deal. That right field at yankee stadium is hilarious tho. That plus the silly bat? Routine liners to right are home runs now.
Damn, that article was awful.
Pitching has been outpacing hitting for a decade. This will probably help bring a little balance back to the game as pitching continues to bring forward new nasty pitches like the sweeper.
Looks like a stickball bat.
