What’s a torpedo bat? History of the Yankees’ controversial bats – NBC New York

The Bronx Bombers now have torpedoes in their arsenal.

The New York Yankees officially launched the “torpedo bat” era over the weekend — with multiple players using a modified baseball bat during the team’s historic offensive onslaught in its opening series of the 2025 season.

The wood of the bat is shifted from the barrel towards the batter’s hands to create a custom sweet spot where contact is most frequently made. The reconfiguration gives the bat the shape of a torpedo — or a bowling pin, which doesn’t sound nearly as menacing or apropos.

Because the Yankees hit bombs with them.

Nine of their MLB record-tying 15 home runs hit in their first three games were used by five players using torpedo bats, including six of a franchise-record nine homers in Saturday’s 20-9 rout over the Milwaukee Brewers. 

“I think the advantage is that you’re more likely to make a reasonable contact,” Dave Savage, a physics teacher in Oregon, told NBC Local. “So…you’ve increased your chances. And then the closer you can get to dead center of that sweet spot where the bat is the largest, most massive, that is going to be your largest exchange of momentum.”

It wasn’t the first time torpedo bats were used in the major leagues, but the Yankees’ offensive outburst helped put the torpedoes on baseball’s radar.

Some social media users and baseball purists — and at least one opposing player – then returned fire, saying the bats should be outlawed.

The bats, however, are legal under MLB’s rules. And more teams are now looking to add torpedo bats to their own arsenal.

What is a torpedo bat?

Mike Stobe/Getty Images

Mike Stobe/Getty Images

The torpedo bat is a custom-shaped baseball bat with a modified barrel that’s tailored to maximize the contact tendencies of the batter.

Wood is shifted from the end of the barrel to a location closer to the hands, making the bat widest at the spot where the batter most often makes contact with the ball.

That reshaping and relocation of the sweet spot gives the bat the appearance of a torpedo.

Who invented the torpedo bat?

No, it wasn’t the Yankees’ assistant to the traveling secretary, George Costanza.

Much of the recent credit for the implementation of the torpedo bat has gone to Aaron Leanhardt, a former Yankees front-office staffer who is now the Miami Marlins’ field coordinator.

Leanhardt, a former physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, said the idea developed in 2022 while he was working with the Yankees’ minor-league hitting department.

The 48-year-old Leanhardt, who holds a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and a Ph.D. in physics from MIT, previously coached baseball in the Atlantic League and at a Montana community college, per The Athletic. He became the Yankees’ major league analyst in 2024, and players within the organization soon began using torpedo bats in regular-season games.  

“Really, it’s just about making the bat as heavy and as fat as possible in the area where you’re trying to do damage on the baseball,” he told The Athletic.

YES Network play-by-play announcer Michael Kay said during Saturday’s broadcast that the Yankees’ analytics department had performed a study on shortstop Anthony Volpe showing he frequently hit the ball on the label of his bat, rather than on the barrel.

So, using Leanhardt’s design, the sweet spot of Volpe’s bat was moved from the barrel to the label.

Who makes the torpedo bat?

The Yankees requested sample models of the torpedo style from some of MLB’s 41 approved bat manufacturers, according to ESPN. The model numbers for the spec bats started with “BP” for bowling pin, a more accurate comp for the bat’s new shape.

“Torpedo sounds kind of cooler,” Leanhardt told ESPN.

Louisville Slugger said four teams have requested torpedo style bats from the company over the past 18 months.

“Teams are analyzing every single at bat by every player, then charting the part of the bat where
each player is making contact with the ball,” the company said Monday in a statement. “Based on the location of the majority of a player’s contact on the barrel, teams are asking us to shift the weight of the barrel and sweet spot to accommodate each hitter.”

What is MLB’s bat rule?

The torpedo bats do not violate MLB’s rules, which state under 3.02: “The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood.”

It goes on to state there may be a cupped indentation up to 1 1/4 inches in depth, 2 inches wide and with at least a 1-inch diameter, and experimental models must be approved by MLB.

When was a torpedo bat first used?

Giancarlo Stanton might be remembered as the player who officially launched MLB’s first torpedo.

Multiple players, including Volpe, experimented with the torpedo bat last season. But it was Stanton who used one to hit seven home runs in 14 postseason games during the Yankees’ run to the 2024 World Series, per ESPN.

Following that success, torpedo bat models were made available to members of the Yankees during spring training.

Five members of the Yankees’ lineup adopted torpedo bats during their 2025 opening series, crushing a combined nine home runs: Jazz Chisholm Jr. (three), Volpe (two), Austin Wells (two), Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger (one), who said he experimented with a torpedo bat during batting practice last season.

Their Yankee teammate and reigning American League MVP Aaron Judge hit four home runs over the first three games of the season, but he did so with a traditional bat.

Which teams use torpedo bats?

The Yankees aren’t the only team using torpedo bats.

Ryan Jeffers of the Minnesota Twins and the Rays’ Junior Caminero and Yandy Díaz used them in Spring Training and during the opening weekend of the regular season, per ESPN. Davis Schneider of the Toronto Blue Jays uses one. MLB.com reported that members of the Baltimore Orioles have experimented with them. As did the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs in spring training, according to the New York Times.

And more torpedos are now on a collision course with the league.

Some pitchers, however, might view the use of torpedo bats in the same way batters once viewed the pitching mound being elevated.

“I think it’s terrible,” Brewers closer Trevor Megill told the New York Post after watching his team surrender 15 home runs to the Yankees. “We’ll see what the data says. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I feel like it’s something used in slow-pitch softball.

“It’s genius: Put the mass all in one spot. It might be bush (league). It might not be. But it’s the Yankees, so they’ll let it slide.”

In order to improve fairness and speed up the game, two new rule changes have been implemented for the 2025 MLB season.