Baseball is a game of very little action and long periods without any real movement, which makes games boring and causes fan attendance to go down. This is why torpedo bats were invented.
Torpedo bats are baseball bats with the barrel lower to the handle, as opposed to the usual barrel which is closer to the end of the bat. They are shaped unlike a baseball bat and more like a bowling pin. They were first made by the New York Yankees minor league hitting coach in the early 2023 season but weren’t used in the MLB until the playoffs in the 2024 season. Their hitting coach talked to his players about where they were missing on the bat and he worked out a plan to make the heaviest and biggest part of the bat lower to increase bat speed.
Torpedo bats were made famous at the beginning of the 2025 MLB season when the Yankees hit nine home runs in their season opener against the Brewers. Four came in the first inning and three came from back to back to back pitches. This game alone started the argument of whether these new bats were too good for the MLB or not. Some fans started to tune in specifically because of the new, exciting bats. The bats were believed to have first been used in the 2024 postseason by Giancarlo Stanton who hit a career high 7 home runs in 14 playoffs games after not performing well during the regular season. Stanton added an American League Championship series MVP to his career achievements while using this bat.
Cal Raleigh is an MLB player that has strived with the new bat and set three records in one season. He holds the most home runs by a Mariner in a single season, most home runs in a season by a switch hitter, and most home runs in a season by a primary catcher. He had 60 home runs in the regular season and is now heading to the playoffs with the Mariners. Since the invention of the torpedo bats, MLB has had its highest attendance in seven years, making a beloved sport all the more exciting.
“It makes the games more fun now that the ball goes farther and is hit deep so much more,” junior Kingston McNeal said. “I hated watching baseball because there was so much down time but now I see multiple home runs every game and it makes it so much more entertaining.”
The new-style of bats are being sold more and more in high school and travel baseball settings, making it way harder for pitchers to strike out batters. This has caused people to debate whether the bats should be legal.
“As a pitcher, I really don’t think they should be allowed,” McNeal said. “When I pitch I look to jam them and have it so they can’t turn on the ball, but with the invention of this bat the barrel is so low that my best pitches turn into extra base hits, and batters I usually get out with ease turn into the best hitters on their team.”
On the other hand, wood bats are beloved by hitters and it makes it hard for them to get banned from baseball because there is a near 50/50 split of people who like and dislike the new weirdly shaped bat. Many people use the bat because it helps with the issue of hitting the ball lower than the barrel, which usually causes a lot of misses or weak hits.
The only part of the bat the hitters don’t like is the end because it is very small. This makes hits off the end much harder to get, however, if it were bigger, the bat would be illegal.
“I don’t think it should be banned because technically it’s not cheating,” Junior Flynn Fickbohm said. “They just moved the bigger part of the bat a little down and if pitchers can throw it outside it doesn’t even work so it’s not like you can’t get out.”
The torpedo bat has helped and hurt baseball as a whole, as more people are tuning in to games, yet a lot of high school players don’t want to play against them. In all, the bat has changed the game of baseball forever.
