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Is it the bat or the confidence that a bat that looks like a torpedo gives?
Anthony Volpe isn’t quite sure just yet, but after hitting two home runs in his first two games of the season with the new bat that a former Yankees analyst helped create, the shortstop isn’t changing a thing.
Volpe is one of five Yankees who are using the new torpedo bat, in which more wood (and therefore mass) is closer to the label of the bat than the typical barrel.
The new dimensions do not violate Major League Baseball’s official rules or the Bat Supplier Regulations, and they are not for everyone — like Aaron Judge, who indicated Sunday morning he has little interest in trying it.
But the early returns have been promising.
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“So far, so good,” Volpe said Sunday before a 12-3 win over the Brewers in The Bronx. “It’s cool to look down at, and the concept makes so much sense. I know I’m bought in. The bigger you can have the barrel where you’re going to hit the ball makes sense to me.
“It’s probably just placebo,” Volpe added with a grin. “A lot of it is looking up at your bat and you see how big the barrel is. But it’s exciting. I think any .001 percent mentally that can give you confidence helps.”
Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger, Paul Goldschmidt and Austin Wells are the other Yankees using the torpedo bat.
“I don’t know the science of it, I just play baseball,” said Chisholm, who homered twice in Sunday’s 12-3 win over the Brewers and has three homers in three games. “I just feel like it gives you a feeling of you have more to work with. You probably don’t have more to work with, but it feels like it, so it gives you that extra confidence in your head to be able to go out there and hit anything.”
Bellinger said the Cubs were swinging with it in batting practice last season, but never used it in a game because it did not yet feel right and the Yankees seem to have had more advancements with it.
But it has already caught on elsewhere, with the Twins’ Ryan Jeffers using it Sunday and others likely to follow around the league.
“I think the benefit for me is I like the weight distribution personally,” Bellinger said. “The weight’s closer to my hands, so I feel as if it’s lighter in a way. So that for me was the biggest benefit. And then obviously the bigger the sweet spot, the bigger the margin for error.”
Bellinger tried a few different models this spring before settling on this one that felt the best. Volpe tried one model during camp that was “horrible” before he got this version that was slightly heavier. Chisholm happened to use Volpe’s bat during one game late in camp and hit a double with it, then homered the next game and decided he had found himself a new bat.
But not everyone is in the same boat.
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“What I did the past couple seasons speaks for itself,” Judge said. “Why try to change something if you have something that’s working?”
Giancarlo Stanton used the torpedo bat last season, though he has since indicated that his current elbow injuries may have had to do with “bat adjustments,” declining to elaborate further.
The brainchild behind the bat, according to social media posts from former Yankees minor leaguer Kevin Smith, is Aaron Leanhardt, a former MIT physicist who served as the club’s major league analyst last season and was a minor league hitting coordinator in the organization before that.
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Leanhardt left the Yankees this offseason for a promotion to become a field coordinator with the Marlins, but his work is still being felt in The Bronx.
“I know Lenny was working really hard on it,” Volpe said.
The new bats went viral on Saturday, during the 20-9 ambush of the Brewers in which the Yankees hit a franchise record nine home runs, with YES Network broadcaster Michael Kay explaining the development on air.
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“I’m sure there’s a part of our clubhouse and team that would have wanted it to be a secret, but it was always going to be out,” Volpe said.
To manager Aaron Boone, the torpedo bats are an example of the Yankees “trying to win on the margins.” He likened it to the “momentum steals” that Volpe has leaned into or using different defensive shifts.
“It’s all within regulation,” Bellinger said. “They made sure of that before the season even started, knowing that with the way these bats looked, it was probably going to get out at some point.”
