The Current - Should torpedo bats be banned from Major League Baseball?

Episode Date: April 2, 2025

The New York Yankees are off to a record-breaking start this season, but all eyes are on their new, torpedo-shaped bats. Baseball historian Gary Gillette explains why these bats — developed by an MIT physicist — are making such a splash, and why there’s already talk of banning them.

You know what I'd like to hear people say more often? I'm not sure. Let me think about that. I'm Nala Ayed, host of Ideas, a podcast that brings you deep thought every day. We're a show for listeners who like to slow down, to check their assumptions, and maybe even change their minds. If that's you, find and follow ideas wherever you get your podcasts. to Canadians about the election. I hope you tune in and please enjoy the current podcast. The New York Yankees have stormed into the 2025 season, racking up runs, slugging homers and turning heads

right out of the gate. 18 home runs in 4 games, a franchise record 9 in a single night. But all that firepower has people talking not just about the players, but about the bats. Some yanks have been swinging a new torpedo-shaped bat. The bat itself is perfectly legal, but for a sport built on tradition, that kind of innovation doesn't go quietly. The quickest take I'm ever given first take history.

It ain't illegal. Everybody else free to do it. Exactly. What we can blame it on the Yankees doing it for. That's ESPN's Stephen A. Smith. Gary Gillette is a baseball historian. His work on total baseball and the ESPN baseball encyclopedia Smith. Gary Gillette is a baseball historian. His work on total baseball and the ESPN baseball encyclopedia has helped shape how the game's history is understood.

Gary, good morning. Thank you for having me on. So what do you think of the bat? I think they're cool. And I think at this point, this has much to do about nothing. Why do you say that? I hate to quote Will Shakespeare, but he was a baseball expert. At this point, this has much to do about nothing. Why do you say that? I hate to quote Will Shakespeare, but he was a baseball expert. Will Shakespeare, the baseball expert.

Okay. I love doing this show because I learn so much every time I do it. Well, let's bring people into the conversation who may not be following it that closely. What exactly is the torpedo bat and how is it different from the typical bat? It's a legal bat, according to MLB rules, where they've shifted the sweet spot, the sweet spot of the place you want to hit the ball for maximum exit velocity and maximum distance.

They shifted it from higher up toward the end of the bat to closer to the player's hands. And a scientist who became a baseball analyst and coach figured out that many players hit the ball below the sweet spot is where they hit the ball more often. Why not move the sweet spot to them? Just no one had ever thought about it before. So he designed a bat, along with other people in the last few years, where you put more wood and therefore more mass, lower on the bat toward the handle,

toward the player's hands, and that will allow players who swing typically connect with the pitch at that point to get better velocity and better distance. But the bat is legal according to its dimensions and its weight. And when you think about it, I don't know why it took an MIT trained physicist

to figure this out, but why wouldn't this have been done earlier? I mean, why is the typical bat that has the weight at the furthest part of the bat, why was it designed that way in the first place? It doesn't seem to make sense. I'm not, the weight wasn't, the sweet spot wasn't at the furthest end,

it just was further toward the end You don't want to hit the ball on the end of the bat if you can avoid it because then you don't generally get a good Hit right so it makes no sense to have that weight there It makes more sense to have it in that sweet spot and and that's that that's what's turning heads right now, right? Well see baseball is a long Siege and This is 150th season of Major League Baseball. The first season of Major League Baseball is 1876.

The first season of professional baseball is 1871. And baseball as an amateur game was called the national pastime in the U.S. in the 1850s. So things change very slowly. It's a traditional sport and many of its fans like tradition and don't like sudden change. But like in anything else, some people come up with ideas that when you look at them, they're obvious. But until someone came up with that idea, no one saw the obvious. So all I can say is I never thought about it, but no one pays me to design baseball

that. No one else ever thought about it. It wasn't like somebody tried this out 20 years ago and they rejected it or that bat manufacturers were offering torpedo bats 10 years ago and the players wouldn't try them. Just no one had thought about doing this. The bats were designed the way they were. Now, there has been change in bat construction and bat selection in the last 25 years, and it's benefited the hitters. It used to be assumed that you want to swing

as heavy a bat as you could, because the more mass, the harder you hit the ball, except that the velocity that you swing the bat at, and the more solid you make a connection with the ball, determines the exit velocity of the ball more than the mass so up until maybe twenty five years ago i may be thirty. I'm players were using bats by and large that were too heavy. extra length, which helps them hit pitches on the outside part of the plate, wasn't worth the extra weight. And so in the last couple decades, bats have gotten a little bit shorter, but substantially

lighter. And those lighter bats have helped hitters hit balls farther, meaning more balls parked over the fence for a home run. But that was a gradual evolution. And even that didn't happen until the late 90s, early 2000s. So players have been using bats basically for the 20th century that pretty much looked alike, although there was a change in the early to mid-20th century where bat handles got skinnier and more the weight of the bat was pushed up into the barrel into the sweet

spot. So that was another, not revolutionary change, but evolutionary change, where hitters realized if they had a thinner handle, they could put more weight in the barrel in the sweet spot and they could hit more home runs. And more home runs are what's happening with the New York Yankees right now, 18 home runs in four games. Not all of them, we should mention, have been courtesy of the torpedo bat. But do you think part of the hype is just because it's the Yankees that are racking

up these home runs with this torpedo bat? If this happened to a different team, there would be less hype. Absolutely. Absolutely. I want to say everyone loves to hate the Yankees, but that doesn't do justice to the Yankees fans who has a very large cohort. But I would say that in baseball, there's a large nation of Yankees fans. There is a middle ground of people who don't either love or hate the Yankees, but they're

sort of wandering in the wilderness. And then there is a very large cohort of Yankees haters. Part of that is the Yankees dominated the game starting in the 20s with Babe Ruth and they won more championships than any other team. Although to be fair, they haven't won a World Series since 2009. Part of it is the New York swagger. The Frank Sinatra, if you make it in New York, you can make it anywhere.

We're better than everybody. It's the metropolitan culture and the swagger, and the Yankee swagger that a lot of people present in the provinces like where I am. Well, you know, you were quoting William Shakespeare. I love this quote because baseball is a game of quotes. You're a historian, you know this. And it was the Milwaukee Brewers manager, Pat Murphy,

when he was asked, because they got creamed by the Yankees about the value of these torpedo bats. And he said, it ain't the wand, it's the magician. That seemed to put it in perspective for me. I think that's a great quote. I mean, do you agree with that? Is it less about the bat itself and the guy, more about the people swinging the bats?

I think it's more about the people swinging the bat, the coaches who are coaching those players, how to swing and how to adjust to the pitchers and the people who designed the bat. I think it's all those things. You have to understand that there's been a tremendous, now I said baseball game normally have evolutionary change, but it's actually there's been a revolution in pitching changes in the last 20 years with high-speed cameras and all sorts of techie stuff that allow pitchers to figure out how to shape their pitches for maximum effect.

And that has really caused offense to plummet, mostly batting average to plummet, meaning many more strikeouts, many fewer balls hitting to play, but the batters have responded by swinging for the fences. If you know that you're not gonna get a lot of base hits, one of the solutions is to swing for the fences. So when you do get a base hit, it goes over the fence

and they can't defense against it. And correct me if I'm wrong, Gary, but don't fans like home runs? I'm a baseball fan. I love seeing a ball knocked out of the park. Absolutely. And no, there's a caveat to that. I will say that, and I believe it was in the 1990s,

Major League Baseball and its TV partners had a series of commercials where pictures, famous pictures, including Greg Maddux, future Hall of Famer, joked around the lawn ball. It was basically like, chicks don't care about what you do, they dig the lawn ball. Now that's a sexist commercial that no one would run today. But they ran that repeatedly, chicks dig the long ball. Now that's a sexist commercial that no one would run today. But they ran that repeatedly, chicks dig the long ball,

because it's long been known that fans like offense, they like scoring, they like home runs, and teams that hit a lot of home runs tend to be winning teams, and fans love winners. So a low offense team that doesn't hit many home runs will typically lose more of their games and therefore they're not exciting or interesting. This has been true throughout baseball history. Many people credit Babe Ruth and the home run explosion of the 1920s

with saving the game after the 1919 Black Sox scandal where the Chicago White Sox dubbed the Black Sox for their corruption through the World Series. What do you think, where do you see this going? I know here in Toronto, I saw one of the Blue Jays players, David Schneider, already saying that he's already ordered a few of these torpedo bats. Do you see this happening now catching on with teams across major league baseball? Uh, I'm sure that dozens of players are already experimenting with them, barring their, their teammates' bats. I'm sure that hundreds of players will be experimenting with them, borrowing their teammates' bats. I'm sure that hundreds of players will be experimenting with them in

batting practice very soon, very, very soon. The question is whether the players like them, because there is a disadvantage to them. The disadvantage, and I'm trying to remember now what the physicists say. One thing would be if you don't hit the ball lower on the bat, if you hit it more in the traditional plays, you want the weight up in the barrel. Two is changing the way the bat feels might change your swing. And one of the things baseball players have to do is repeat what makes them successful over and over and over. And three is it makes the bat a little bit harder to swing.

And so you're not going to get coverage on pitches that are off the plate or on the outside part of the plate as well, because you weaken, not weaken the bat in terms of breaking, but you weaken the bat in terms of its ability to hit the ball hard at the upper parts of the barrel. So it's a compromise, but if you do hit the ball, what they call at the label, where the torpedo bat has moved some of the mass, this will benefit you. How much of an effect that will have, I don't know,

and nobody knows. It would be credibly rash to ban those bats right now. But people panic. I mean, until last night, this was a three-game sample out of 162 game season. And by the way, it had been done before. We got a long way to go before we can bring in the full judgment on those torpedo bats.

But Gary, it's good having a chat with you about it today. OK, well, thank you very much. Gary Gillett is one of the foremost baseball historians in the U.S. We reached him in Detroit, Michigan.