Remember back in March when the New York Yankees outscored the Milwaukee Brewers 36-14 in their opening series of the year?
That weekend, Aaron Judge and the Yankees smashed 15 home runs and scored 20 runs in game two of the series. Judge drilled three homers on his club’s way to hitting nine in the contest. They would become the first team in Major League Baseball history to hit nine homers in one game twice in a season when they accomplished the feat again on August 19 against the Tampa Bay Rays.
Fans watching those games against the Brewers on television noticed something different about some of the Yankees players’ bats. Players and fans alike quickly learned they were called “Torpedo” bats, designed by Aaron Leanhardt, a Miami Marlins field coordinator and former Yankees analyst.
Opposing Player Spoke Out After Yankees Usage
Initially, the barrels of the bats appeared thicker, and some Yankees players questioned the way the distribution of the bats’ weight affected the handle’s appearance.
“We were all kind of looking at this bat, and we were like, ‘Hmm, what is this thing?’” Cody Bellinger told MLB.com’s Bryan Hoch in March. “It’s so unique. I think there has been some more success with it and maybe some more advancements [since last year].”
Some of Bellinger’s teammates who used the legal bats included Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Anthony Volpe. They seemed to love using them, but other players around the league felt they gave the Yankees an unfair advantage.
I think it’s terrible,” Brewers closer Trevor Megill said about the Yankees using the torpedo bats. “We’ll see what the data says. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I feel like it’s something used in slow-pitch softball. It’s genius: Put the mass all in one spot. It might be bush [league]. It might not be. But it’s the Yankees, so they’ll let it slide.
What Megill did not realize was that there were plenty of other teams and players around the league swinging them. Adley Rutschman of the Baltimore Orioles, Dansby Swanson of the Chicago Cubs, and Francisco Lindor of the New York Mets also used torpedo bats, among many others.
What a Funny Thing to Make a Fuss About
The Yankees did not score 36 runs in one weekend because of the torpedo bats. Truthfully, they managed to do that because the Brewers‘ pitching staff proved largely ineffective. Especially former Yankee Nestor Cortes, who allowed eight earned runs and walked five in his first start with his new team.
Cortes allowed back-to-back-to-back home runs on the first three pitches of the game on two fastballs and a cutter that caught a lot of the middle of the plate. Clearly, Milwaukee survived that weekend because they are a legitimate World Series contender.
A month or so after the Yankees-Brewers series, virtually nobody discussed the torpedo bats on television or social media anymore.
“Somehow, someway, everyone survived the matter without the league completely falling apart,” wrote Matt Snyder of CBS Sports. “The league did nothing because there was nothing to do, and the story, after a few days of social media stardom, dissipated.”
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