Are the New York Yankees Cheating with New Torpedo Bats?

Torpedo Bats? How the hell did we get here?

It’s always something in baseball. Always a diversion to how the game is played, always a smarter mind trying to figure out a better way.

Binoculars in the bleachers to try and steal and pass along signs. There’s the upper juice that permeated the sport for years. Slow with the reactions on a Sunday day game after a night game? Worry no more.

There were steroids. HGH. We all know about the Houston trash cans. Pitchers getting stickier and stickier with the stuff that helped spin the ball. Spin is in you know.

Yankees Blast Away

Well, welcome to what surely will be the next craze. Torpedo bats. The Yankees enjoyed a team record nine homers in one game during their first weekend of the season. They smashed fifteen homers in all.

Not all the homers were hit with the new fangled wood. Aaron Judge for instance did not use one to hit any of his eye opening four homers to start the season but folks are talking.

While Judge did not use that bat for his long balls, Anthony Volpe, Jazz Chisholm, Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger did:

Most MLB players had an opinion by nightfall including Padres infielder Xander Bogaerts:

“You know how you can edit pictures these days. But I saw (Jazz) Chisholm had homered. I’d never seen it, never heard of it. … I thought they edited the picture, because I’ve never seen anything like that.”

Here’s how it all came to be at the House that Ruth built.

Are Torpedo Bats Legal?

According to baseball bat rules, they conform. MLB Rule 3.02 states that “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.”

The torpedo bat seems to fall inside the rules. It turns out the Yankees are not the only ones onto this updated piece of equipment. The Rays Junior Camanero tried one and got a hit in a pinch hitting appearance. Others are ready to embrace:

Recent Changes Helped Pitchers

There’s no doubt that new tech the last few years has done way more for pitching than hitting. The shifting of fielders had to force new rules.

Pitchers have learned how to tunnel pitches, Make two pitches look exactly alike for about 70% of the way to the plate only to break off wildly in different directions. They’ve done deeper studies on pitch sequencing to disguise pitch patterns.

Now comes this for hitters. It’s going to be difficult to A, take this away, and B, stop it from spreading.

Okay league, the ball is in your court. MLB loved the home run chase of 1998, so much so they all turned a blind eye to all the steroids that entered the game.

They’ll probably like this run producer a whole lot more.