Are the Yankees’ “Torpedo Bats” Good for Baseball—or Bad?
CGS lecturer Andy Andres, who teaches math and statistics, and has taught baseball-centric courses, on the sport’s latest controversy
The New York Yankees Anthony Volpe bats with one of the new torpedo-shaped bats in a home run–laden game against the Milwaukee Brewers on March 29 in New York. Photo by Angelina Katsanis/AP Photo
Are the Yankees’ “Torpedo Bats” Good for Baseball—or Bad?
CGS lecturer Andy Andres, who teaches math and statistics, and has taught baseball-centric courses, on the sport’s latest controversy
Andy Andres was in the press box at Fenway Park on Wednesday, prepping for the Red Sox home opener. But we wanted to ask him about the team’s archrival New York Yankees and the new type of bat they’re using to hit record numbers of home runs at the start of this year’s Major League Baseball season.
Called the “torpedo bat,” its lumber is shaped differently than the traditional wooden bat, with more of its mass shifted toward the middle of the hitting area, closer to the hitter’s hands. When the Yankees hit a team record nine home runs in a 20-9 win over the Milwaukee Brewers, several of the players who homered had used the torpedo bats. The bats then became a major topic of conversation all week, raising questions about whether or not they provided an unfair advantage, even though the league has said they fit the legal guidelines for bats.
Andres, a senior lecturer in natural sciences and mathematics at the College of General Studies, teaches mainly statistics, but he has also taught baseball-centric courses. He is a student of the science behind the game and a specialist in sabermetrics, the data-driven analysis of baseball performance. He’s also a freelancer for Major League Baseball in technology and statistics, performing game-time tasks, such as running the pitch clock at Fenway Park.
While he had a few minutes of downtime at Fenway, we asked Andres about the torpedo bats, if they really work, and how big of a deal it is.
Q&A
with Andy Andres
BU Today: What’s different about the design of these bats and how do they work?
Andres: It changes the center of mass of the bat. And what that does is change where the sweet spot is. It makes it closer to the hands. And that helps batters, especially the ones who are standing a little closer to the plate in the batter’s box. If that’s your style, you want to be closer to the plate—which, if you notice, a lot of players do. This allows them to have a compact tight swing, but still cover the outside of the plate with the sweet spot of the bat.
Also, it seems to maybe extend the sweet spot a little bit. Instead of just being, you know, two, three, four inches, it might get a little larger the way they designed this bat. If you change the taper like this and you increase the size in the middle of the bat, I think it does spread out a little bit too—the whole area of good contact. The issue is you want to hit it in the center of the mass. That’s the sweet spot, because that’s the most energy transmitted to the ball and on the swing.
BU Today: What everybody was talking about after the Yankees big weekend: is there really that big of an effect or is this another baseball superstition or what do we have here?
Andres: The home runs last weekend are mostly because the Yankees can hit the ball hard. Second, it’s the ballpark effect. Yankee Stadium has a very short right field. You’re going to get more home runs into right field in Yankee Stadium than other places. And third, I’m not sure how effective the Brewers pitching was. I haven’t looked that closely. But if you have a great hitting team in Yankee Stadium, I think that’s most of the effect.
The bat effect might be some small percentage, I don’t know, 10 percent, 15 percent maximum effect on batted ball distance or batted ball velocity. But it’s mostly because the Yankees are good, right? That’s most of it.
BU Today: My next question was going to be, can they make a bad hitter good or just a good hitter a little better? And it sounds like the latter.
It’s a lot like what we talked about 20, 25 years ago with the effect of anabolic steroids. Anabolic steroids are not going to make me a Major League Baseball player—or you or anyone, right? But they’re going to have this small, marginal effect [on MLB players], and this [bat] might be a small, marginal effect, too. Maybe more like 5 percent. I think it is a marginal increase in effectiveness, especially for batters who might move up in the box and have a more consistent swing.
But part of this is also psychological. Baseball is very much a heady game, and if you’re confident, it changes a lot. So maybe there’s some good messaging, good feel for the Yankees, but I don’t know.
BU Today: The new bat certainly became a topic of conversation after last weekend. But this is like when somebody gets a new putter in the PGA, isn’t it? Is this a real controversy or just a fun thing to talk about?
I put it under fun thing to talk about. But batting is hard now because pitching has gotten so good the past 15 years thanks to technology and knowledge. The ability to measure the effectiveness of all pitches, all grips, all pitch types, and the pitchers themselves. So all of this has just gone through the roof, meaning pitching has gotten much better. Bottom line, I think this is a way to catch up a little—maybe this is helping the psychology of some batters and having that small little marginal effect, too.
BU Today: Are the bats legal under current rules and do you expect any rule changes?
Yes. No.
BU Today: So not much of a controversy.
I think it’s a fun story. Baseball likes a fun story. Look, not every batter is going to choose these bats. [Yankee] Aaron Judge, the best batter, probably—top five, at least—in the world today, hasn’t used the torpedo bat and he still crushes the ball. He’s really good. He doesn’t need the torpedo bat to be really good. Which is sort of proof positive of the marginal effect of this.
I think it’s a fun story. Baseball likes a fun story.
BU Today: So what do you expect to happen? Is this story going to fade away in three days?
No, I think a lot of people will use this. A lot of people will find that it’s maybe a benefit and a lot of it might be, you know, they like that 5 percent benefit. They feel better. But a few people have been trying this bat for, I think, at least four or five years. The Yankee explosion, a lot of Yankees using it, created the story, which is good. It’s good for baseball to talk about this.
BU Today: Is there another big change coming in the game, like maybe the robot umpire for balls and strikes that was tried out in spring training this year?
It’s going to be that next year. They’ll have the challenge system, not full robot umpires. Just the challenge system that you saw in spring training this year. I would put the probability of that happening at about 90 to 95 percent. Nothing is certain, right? So I wouldn’t put 100 percent on it, but I think it’s coming. Everyone likes it. Umpires, players…the coaches, the fans really like it. So I think it’s coming.
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