By: Robert Craft

TheSouthernSportsEdition.com news services

Torpedo bats have been the main focus of baseball at the start of the 2025 MLB season and bat companies are winning big as a result.

Marucci and Victus, the new official bats of MLB, as well as Chandler were the first manufacturers to put torpedo bats on sale, at prices ranging from $199 to $239.

MLB Commissioner Manfred also called torpedo bats, another relatively new advancement in the sport that’s rapidly gaining popularity, “absolutely good for baseball.”

The bats differ from traditional models due to their shape, which comes from redistributing their weight so that the densest part, or the “sweet spot,” is closer to the handle.

The barrel (where players want the bat to make contact with the ball) is bigger. These bowling-pin-shaped bats have sparked interest among players and spurred discussions among fans, and of course Manfred supports the interest and attention.

The Yankees helped bring the torpedo bats mainstream earlier in the season after they hit 15 homers and scored 36 runs in only three games against the Milwaukee Brewers.

Five Yankees — Cody Bellinger, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Paul Goldschmidt, Anthony Volpe and Austin Wells — used torpedo bats in the opening 4 game series, and they combined for 10 of the club’s record-setting 18 home runs in its first four games.

If not for the initial offensive barrage from the Yankees, it’s likely the level of interest in the torpedo bats would not be so pronounced.

Torpedo bats are recently mainstream, but they were being used under the radar in 2024. Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton used a torpedo bat all last season and finished with his best stats since 2021.

Behind the scenes, Stanton’s adoption of the technology during his torrid postseason last October started generating buzz in the bat industry, according to Smith. Stanton had seven home runs and a 1.048 OPS for the Yankees in the 2024 playoffs.

New York Mets superstar shortstop Francisco Lindor also used a torpedo bat last season and finished second in the National League MVP voting.

While the bats have only recently become a major storyline across the league, it turns out that uniquely shaped bat experiments have actually been happening quietly across baseball for a long time. Why the national uproar now on bat technology?

Torpedo bats are not under the radar anymore. Players across the sport have started asking manufacturers for their own versions.

Birch seems to be the preferred wood for the bats, which were designed to help hitters make truer contact in an age where more and more pitchers are throwing 100 mph and offering nastier repertoires than ever.

For decades in baseball’s past, players swung bats made of ash until Barry Bonds (with the help of steroids) helped popularize maple in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Christian Yelich was happy that there was a possible technological advancement in hitting. Yelich noted that over the past several years, most of the advancements have come on the pitching side.

Torpedo bats might be the response to the technical and analytical advancements that pitching has seen in the past 5-10yrs.

In other words, time for the hitters to get their turn.