The New York Yankees’ torpedo bats are the talk of Major League Baseball after the team hit a franchise-record nine home runs in a game against the Milwaukee Brewers.
Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger, Austin Wells, Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm Jr. homered using the strikingly-different bats in New York’s 20-9 rout of the Brewers on Saturday.
The bats are made with wood moved lower down the barrel, creating a bigger “sweet spot” and a shape almost like a bowling pin.
Mike Stobe/Getty Images 
The Yankees hit four more homers on Sunday, bringing the total to 15 home runs in their first three games and matching the 2006 Detroit Tigers for the most in MLB history.
“That’s just trying to be the best we can be,” manager Aaron Boone said. “That’s one of the things that’s gotten pointed out. I say to you guys all the time, we’re trying to win on the margins and that shows up in so many different ways.”
Are the Yankees’ torpedo bats legal?
MLB has relatively uncomplicated bat rules, which state: “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.
The torpedo bats are within the rules.
Former Yankees infielder Kevin Smith posted online Saturday that Aaron Leanhardt, a former Yankees front-office staffer who now works for the Miami Marlins, developed the torpedo barrel to bring more mass to a bat’s sweet spot.
“You’re going up with a weapon that can be better,” Smith wrote. “Your just misses could be clips, your clips could be flares, and your flares could (be) barrels. And it was true, it’s fractions of an inch on the barrel differentiating these outcomes.”
“It’s about the batter not the bat. It’s about the hitters and their hitting coaches, not their hitting implement. So I’m happy to always help those guys get a little but better, but ultimately it’s up to them to put good swings on good pitches,” said Leinhardt, the Marlins field coordinator.
Giancarlo Stanton used torpedo bats during the 2024 MLB Postseason, when he hit seven home runs in 14 games. But he has not appeared in a game yet this season due to an elbow injury.
New York Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor has also used torpedo bats this season. He went hitless in his first three games.
“The concept makes so much sense”
Goldschmidt, batting leadoff for the first time, opened Saturday’s game with a 413-foot homer off Nestor Cortes and Bellinger followed with a 451-foot drive that initially didn’t register with Statcast. Aaron Judge, using a bat with a conventional shape, hit a 468-foot shot that made the Yankees the first team to homer on each of a game’s first three pitches since MLB’s records began in 1988.
Bellinger first was presented with the torpedo-shape concept in a batting practice session last season with the Chicago Cubs but did not use it in a game. He was given a more advanced version during spring training this year.
“I started swinging this one in spring or before spring, kind of early on, and I was like, ‘Oh it feels good,'” Bellinger said. “It was an ounce lighter than the one I was swinging, but I think the way the weight was distributed felt really good.”
Pamela Smith / AP 
Bellinger, the 2019 NL MVP with the Los Angeles Dodgers, switched from a maple Louisville Slugger to a birch bat and cited MLB’s 2010 rule change narrowing the maximum diameter from 2.75 inches.
“I’m usually a maple guy, but birch for me allows me to get the bigger barrel because I wasn’t grandfathered in,” Bellinger said. “So it’s all within regulation. They made sure that before the season even started, knowing that I imagine at some point the way these bats look that it’s probably going to get out at some point.”
Volpe, who homered for the second straight game Saturday, began using the torpedo in spring training.
“The concept makes so much sense. I know I’m bought in,” Volpe said. “The bigger you can have the barrel where you hit the ball, it makes sense to me.”
Why Aaron Judge isn’t using a torpedo bat
Chisholm homered twice Sunday, hitting behind Judge for the second straight day. He said he started using the torpedo bat after hitting a double and a homer in spring training with Volpe’s bat.
“I love my bat,” Chisholm said with a slight laugh. “I think you can tell. It doesn’t feel like a different bat. It just helps you in a real way I guess.”
Judge, who hit an AL-record 62 homers in 2022 and 58 last year en route to his second AL MVP award, didn’t see a reason to experiment.
“The past couple of seasons kind of speak for itself,” Judge said a day after his third career three-homer game. “Why try to change something?”
Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy said he knows a little about developing and bat designs from serving on the boards of two bat companies.
“Players are doing everything to try to get an edge today legally and I think they should,” Murphy said. “I think whatever is good for the offensive game is good for the game.”
contributed to this report.
