TURNING A BASEBALL BAT INTO A TORPEDO SOUNDS LIKE ANOTHER STEROIDS CRAZE
The Yankees have hit 15 home runs thanks to a former front-office staffer who reshaped the wood in barrels, which is strange when baseball has PED scandals and doesn’t allow pitchers to doctor balls
They play in minor-league ballparks and refuse any mentions of Sacramento. They’ve trimmed game times only with a clock of 15 to 18 seconds and increased parking rates to $85. They serve markets with lame, unwieldy telecasts. After next season, commissioner Rob Manfred and the Players Association might duel in a long-term labor impasse that wrecks the sport.
So, why not? Just allow a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist to toy with baseball bats and create torpedos. Never mind that the ball itself cannot be touched or lathered with rosin, sunscreen, pine tar or Spider Tack. Let Aaron Leanhardt, who once worked in the New York Yankees’ front office, create non-corkage in the barrels by reapplying wood and making ball-contact the real swing force.
Say, isn’t that a bowling pin of sorts at the end? This is legal?
Yes, it is, as the Yankees hit 15 home runs in their first three games, with nine from five players with funky bats. Saturday, they hit nine shots that traveled almost 3,700 feet. Baseball has so many rules that crack our heads, touting live gambling with DraftKings while Pete Rose still isn’t in the Hall of Fame. Leanhardt, who served the Yankees as lead analyst before joining the Miami Marlins as field coordinator, simply followed guidelines.
“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,” MLB states in Rule 3.02, permitting “a cupped indentation up to 1 1/4 inches in depth, 2 inches wide and with at least a 1-inch diameter.”
A batter cannot use cork or other substances to add power. For the same reason, a steroids infraction leads to lengthy suspensions and lethal punishment, keeping Barry Bonds and Alex Rodriguez out of Cooperstown and barring Atlanta’s Jurickson Profar for 80 games Monday. But Leanhardt can use his computers and conclude, telling The Athletic: “Where are you trying to hit the ball? Where are you trying to make contact? Really, it’s just about making the bat as heavy and as fat as possible in the area where you’re trying to do damage on the baseball.”
That simply, the Yankees tied franchise and league records. Crazier, Aaron Judge hit three in one game and four in the series against Milwaukee — without using the new torpedo. Already, Manfred can be accused of stealing national attention after dumping ESPN as a media partner. Is he permitting a fudging of wood and making us wonder: Will the Yankees maul the single-season record of 307, held by the 2023 Braves and 2019 Twins? The Dodgers are trying to finish 162-0. The Yankees might hit 500.
Feel cheated? Or attempting to enjoy a fresh twist before baseball goes away?
“That’s just trying to be the best we can be. That’s one of the things that’s gotten pointed out,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone told the media. “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. We have a big organization that is invested in a lot of different things, where we’re trying to be better in every possible way.”
They are manipulating the game, regardless of the rule book. Someone can mess around with a bat and not smear a ball? Make any sense? “The reality is, it’s all within Major League standards. It’s 2025, so we can account for things a lot better,” Boone said. “When I played, I probably used six, seven, eight different model bats throughout my career. Those things aren’t new. There’s just more people pouring into trying to optimize guys as best we can.”
One of the torpedo haulers is Anthony Volpe. “The concept makes so much sense. I know I’m bought in,” said the shortstop, who has two homers. “The bigger you can have the barrel where you hit the ball, it makes sense to me. If it can help you foul off one pitch a season, if it buys you one more pitch, you might as well try it. I think Lenny was working really hard at it.”
Another Is Jazz Chisholm, who has three homers. “I love my bat,” he said, adding a laugh. “I think you can tell. It doesn’t feel like a different bat. It just helps you in a real way I guess.”
“We were all kind of looking at this bat, and we were like, ‘Hmm, what is this thing?’ ” Cody Bellinger said. “It’s so unique. I started swinging this one in the spring, and I was like, ‘Oh it feels good.’ ’’It was an ounce lighter than the one I was swinging, but I think the way the weight was distributed felt really good. It’s all within regulation. They made sure of that before the season started, knowing at some point the way these bats look.”
The power bonanza brings a question: When will other teams find Aaron Leanhardt? Today? It’s one matter for the Yankees, who lost Juan Soto to the Mets, to have Judge hitting four without the torpedo. But what about those who do? “What I’ve done the past couple of seasons speaks for itself,” said Judge, referring to his 157 homers in three years. “There’s a lot of new things in the game, like they’ve added the little hockey puck on the bottom of some guys’ bats to add a counterweight. You’ve got the Torpedo bats; you’ve got so many different things. Hopefully, as my career goes on, maybe I could start adding some of those in if I start losing something. But I think we’re good where we’re at right now.”
For now, baseball has our attention. That will end soon, with this weekend’s basketball Final Four for the men and women and next month’s NFL draft, not to mention the NBA and NHL postseasons. Isn’t this a cheesy ploy?
“It’s probably just a placebo,” Volpe said. “A lot of it is just looking up at your bat and seeing how big the barrel is, but it’s exciting. I think any 0.01 percent mentally that it gives you confidence. It helps.”
That’s what they said about performance enhancing drugs. Why not swing a piece of timber from the forest? Or a sledgehammer? Or take Sammy Sosa’s Flintstone vitamins?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.