14 ms·

MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

306 points by cf100clunk 2y ago

koolba 2y ago
Did it really take 125+ years for someone to realize the bat does not need to evenly taper? This seems like some seriously low lying fruit.
- daedrdev 2y ago
  No, different bats have been around forever, Babe Ruth's bats looks like a log compared to modern bats. However shifting the taper based on where a player gets most of their hits based on advanced tracking of their hit location is new.
- abfan1127 2y ago
  its less about even taper and more about moving weight/center of mass around. Youth bats have been doing that for quite a while. Camwood bats is a great example of moving weight around. In their case, its a training bat.
  - koolba 2y ago
    Can you take it a step further with uneven wood density? Like growing the tree with part of the branch under compression.
    - sib 2y ago
      Oh, I like this. Feels like something you'd see in NPB with teams recruiting Bonsai masters to grow bats.
- papercrane 2y ago
  Different bat profiles have been around forever, and many players have their own custom profiles that they like. I think the key innovation that enabled this new profile is the accuracy and quality of data being collected. Edit: Here's an article talking about some of the bat tracking technology that MLB has deployed in recent years: https://technology.mlblogs.com/introducing-statcast-2023-high-frame-rate-bat-and-biomechanics-tracking-3844890264a6 https://technology.mlblogs.com/introducing-statcast-2023-hig...
lenerdenator 2y ago
Cool. Make it open-source for the rest of the league. Otherwise this is just more proof that Yankees fans are the same kind of people who would cheer when the casino wins another slot machine pull.
- tdhz77 2y ago
  Love this comment.
- jjulius 2y ago
  My father-in-law has openly admitted that the reason they're his favorite team is because they have the most money. Verbatim.
  - 98codes 2y ago
    Remind him that he needs to turn in his interlocking NY for an interlocking LA.
- 98codes 2y ago
  The concept is out there -- different players would have different tendencies that would require slightly different adjustments. This will make the team owners either do their own analysis, or come up with yet more excuses to hide the fact that while they could afford it, they won't.
- treis 2y ago
  Open source what exactly? It's a piece of wood turned on a lathe. Not an atom bomb
ramesh31 2y ago
Hard to imagine whatever advantage this is affording won't be nullified by pitchers within a season. The arms race is getting insane.
smeej 2y ago
Maybe it's just me, but if I worked for a school as close to Fenway as MIT, I sure wouldn't risk putting my name on custom bats for the Yankees!
lbotos 2y ago
Im glad this landed here so I can ask: Physics nerds, would a “larger contact area” give the baseball more velocity? I’ve been speculating that moving the mass lower effectively increases bat speed because its a “shorter bat”, but all of the commentary is acting like the larger barrel is “more power”. I’d expect larger barrel increases odds of contact, not increased power transfer? (But I also think of a car with bike diameter wheels and that could obviously change the power transfer)
- acc_297 2y ago
  Some are saying it’s about the center of mass being closer to the point of contact I’m not an expert but I think it has more to too with reducing vibrations along the bat and increasing the efficiency of energy transfer Again not an expert
- janalsncm 2y ago
  You are transferring rotational energy to the ball. Rotational energy is proportional to square of angular velocity. It is only linearly proportional to moment of inertia. So bat speed is more important than weight, all things considered. From what I can tell this is more about making it easier to make solid contact. Even if it lowers the moment of inertia, it’s more important that the ball goes on a decent trajectory rather than e.g. directly into the ground. A bigger radius means the ball will be exit closer to the plane of the swing.
whycome 2y ago
Are we entering the F1 stage of baseball and other sports? I bet there’s room for optimization with gloves and shoes and uniforms. I’m surprised teams haven’t made use of mobile recovery units when visiting away teams (instead of hotels). And there’s still gotta be ways to work around fatigue related to travel and time zone changes. I’m still surprised how basic and limited home team locker rooms can be. There are probably cool tech and social/psych solutions.
- janalsncm 2y ago
  They’ve been Moneyballing the game for a while with analytics to the point that the MLB had to ban certain defensive techniques. (Analytics says he always hits it there, so put a bunch of defensive players there.)
- jgalt212 2y ago
  > I bet there’s room for optimization with gloves Maybe so, but the demand is just not there with so many play ending up as home runs or strikeouts.
- Affric 2y ago
  Definitely already begun. Players diets, sleep schedules, low altitude flights…
currymj 2y ago
if it leads to more home runs i'm against it. if it leads to more solid hits and plays in the infield, i'm for it. unclear which one, i look forward to finding out more.
m463 2y ago
given the rules (solid wood, max 2.61" and 42")... I wonder if they couldn't have non-round profiles. Might be able to steer the ball, like a golf driver or add spin like some sort of racket.
- LegionMammal978 2y ago
  From the rulebook [0]: > 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. [0] https://mktg.mlbstatic.com/mlb/official-information/2025-official-baseball-rules.pdf https://mktg.mlbstatic.com/mlb/official-information/2025-off...
rsync 2y ago
My son - a baseball player - saw these in use this past week and noted: “ That was dumb… They should have saved them for the playoffs…” … and I can’t help but agree.
- blahyawnblah 2y ago
  You'd have to make the playoffs first
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_World_Series https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_World_Series
- plondon514 2y ago
  Boone can't even cheat well
colordrops 2y ago
Hasn't equipment been evolving since the beginning of the game? Why would this be out of line with that?
trhway 2y ago
Sounds like those hammer head tennis rackets. Strange that it didn’t happen decades ago. And nothing wrong with such innovation just making game more fast and powerful. The typical baseball bat's balance - very different from say a sword's - has always felt wrong to me, and i've just chalked it up to my not being a baseball player and thus not understanding. The new shape seems to improve the balance toward the centuries established for swords, etc.
RajT88 2y ago
Here is what I have learned from people who religiously follow various kind of sports which intersect with technology: A new tech will be allowed to stand if everyone can take advantage of it equally AND it does not make the sport too boring. Gotta get that ad and sponsor money.
benmathes 2y ago
I suspect this may result in more pitches away to these batters so they have to make contact on the narrower end of the bat. I.e. it's a move that may well have a counter move.
- xxpor 2y ago
  Folks will start to use longer bats then and crowd the plate. Of course that'll be countered with more inside pitching.
  - bob_theslob646 2y ago
    >Folks will start to use longer bats then and crowd the plate. (Rule 3.02 states that bats cannot be more than 2.61 inches in diameter and 42 inches in length.) [https://www.mlb.com/news/baseball-bat-history#:~:text=(Rule%203.02%20states%20that%20bats,and%2042%20inches%20in%20length.) https://www.mlb.com/news/baseball-bat-history#:~:text=(Rule%...]
bgschulman31 2y ago
I think the media is attributing too much to the bats. I was at the Yankees game, and the wind was blowing straight out and hard. Many of the home runs I saw hit would have been fly outs on a day with more normal wind.
- slumberlust 2y ago
  You're right, we should ban global warming too!
pasquinelli 2y ago
> Unfortunately, the MLB reviewed the torpedo bats after the game and somehow had zero issues with them? "Unfortunately, the MLB reviewed the torpedo bats after the game and somehow had zero issues with them", isn't a question; adding a question mark just makes me read you with an obnoxious up-tone.
- Affric 2y ago
  The wonderful thing about human language is that often context implies meaning. It’s more than the words on the page.
  - pasquinelli 2y ago
    what's that got to do with what i said?
- RandallBrown 2y ago
  The question is implied. "How could they possibly have done that?"
gradus_ad 2y ago
Innovations are always fun and disruptive at first, until the competition gets wise and adapts. By concentrating weight in the center of the bat hitters will be less able to protect the outside and inside of the zone. I don't expect to see the torpedos past June.
fracus 2y ago
I'm wary this will change baseball for the worse. Already, we've seen the power game become more and more dominant since the steroid era. You see less of the base running and nickel and dime baseball. It's all about home runs. If it were up to me, they would make the bats deader, not more lively.
- poulsbohemian 2y ago
  So much this - the game is better when the focus is on getting the ball in play. Likewise, I prefer the WNBA these days because it's a game of fundamentals rather than the 3-point shootout of the NBA.
throwaway984393 2y ago
[dead]
wileydragonfly 2y ago
Man, I got a really sweet bat on clearance the last time around they banned some new design. It’s great for the batting cage. Keep an eye on this one, might be $10 out the door next year.
stevage 2y ago
Next season everyone has this, and then what? All the historical stats are busted.
username3 2y ago
Would anyone care if he just used a shorter bat that didn’t get thinner?
eru 2y ago
Wow, that author is one grumpy fellow.
iambateman 2y ago
As a kid, my all-time favorite Christmas present was a Gen-1x baseball bat. It was my first -3 bat, and promised a new metal alloy that would help me hit harder. Talk about sparking the imagination! Without question, one of the high points of childhood was going out and trying to make that bat pop. A lot of long-term baseball fans “get it” when it comes to creative tech in the game and it’s fun to see something new with bats. The only thing I want to point out is that baseball (and all big sports) have always been a technological arms race and always will be. It’s just part of it.
freetime2 2y ago
Shouldn’t pitchers be able to adapt to this? If the sweet spot has moved, just pitch where the sweet spot isn’t.
Detrytus 2y ago
I think that’s a good thing. As an outsider who only recently started following baseball I can say that what makes the game quite boring is a difficulty mismatch: throwing the ball is easy, hitting it is quite hard (many MLB players have batting averages of 0.250 or below) which means that a typical baseball game consists of many throws, many strike outs and only occasional hits an runs.
tqi 2y ago
"you can’t just make a new bat and ruin over 100 years of baseball" If this jabroni was in charge of sports, there'd be no forward pass, no three-point line, no fosbury flop. Sports should be frozen in a specific moment of this guy's choosing. MLB batting averages have been on a steady, multi-decade decline as pitching quality and strategy has improved[1], so God forbid we do something to add some offense. [1] https://apnews.com/article/mlb-vanishing-offense-allstar-b487ff4d26bd053e2d91b6a8b084a53f https://apnews.com/article/mlb-vanishing-offense-allstar-b48...
- scop 2y ago
  Seeing “jabroni” said on HN made my day
prokopton 2y ago
Elly De La Cruz mashed two 400+ plus bombs to dead center with a torpedo bat today. Whatever helps the Reds hit homers I’m fine with.
tzury 2y ago
That immediately reminded me of George Constanza suggesting Yankees players should wear cotton at the ballpark to improve their performance.
gukov 2y ago
Not a baseball fan, but I’m curious if the MLB will go the F1 route (ie ban the “hack”) or embrace it as it will probably make for more entertaining games. Home runs are a good thing, right?
- globular-toast 2y ago
  After my initial surprise that teams have their own bats (presumably they don't have their own balls, though?), F1 was the first thing that came to mind. I don't follow F1 closely but I understand there is a constant struggle between allowing constructors to innovate (and thus having the constructors' championship in addition to drivers') and keeping the sport both fun and safe.
lern_too_spel 2y ago
Good. Baseball isn't a serious spectator sport. It's only interesting to statisticians. Now there will be more work for them to do, adjusting for bat type in addition to stadium dimensions, rule changes, etc. to compare players across eras. And more HRs might make it a little more interesting to spectators as long as the OBP doesn't increase to prolong an already too long game.
- cf100clunk 2y ago
  The statistical record might require a whole new set of asterisks for Torpedo-using batters.
- d35007 2y ago
  > Good. Baseball isn't a serious spectator sport. It's only interesting to statisticians What makes a spectator sport "serious"? The average MLB game had almost 30,000 spectators in the 2024 season[1]. That's a lot of statisticians. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2024/10/01/mlb-attendance-sees-second-consecutive-year-of-increase-tops-71-million/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2024/10/01/mlb-atten...
  - lern_too_spel 2y ago
    You can put a basketball game on anywhere in the world, and people will watch it, even if they haven't watched basketball before. People only watch baseball out of tradition. MLB didn't even have a play clock until 2023, letting batters step out of the box at whim and create even longer periods with no action.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - paulcole 2y ago
      > You can put a basketball game on anywhere in the world, and people will watch it, even if they haven't watched basketball before What the heck is this confident assertion based on?
wifipunk 2y ago
Matching their franchise record for HRs in a game in only 4 innings is wild!
- ronnier 2y ago
  Note that Aaron Judge hit 3 of those home runs (including a grand slam) and he did not use a torpedo bat.
  - blankx32 2y ago
    Also note that Judge is a machine
daedrdev 2y ago
This seems to most help with guys who were hitting the ball most often not at the sweet spot. By moving the sweet spot to where they are hitting the ball, they might gain some power. A bat needs to be round, a solid piece of wood, less than a certain length and less than a certain diameter. The actual shape is not defined.
- LeifCarrotson 2y ago
  It's interesting to me, who is not a baseball player but a software engineer, that even at the level of professional sports the solution is not to just train the athletes to swing the ideal bat "correctly" but to redesign the bat to be sub-optimal but such that when the players use it "wrong" the right thing happens. The physicists and swing coaches and trainers and teammates have probably been telling Volpe and Chisholm for almost 2 decades to make contact at the tip of the bat instead of closer to their hands. But the solution turned out to be adjusting the bat and not the swing. Fascinating. I can sit in my office and deliberate on the location of buttons and indicators on the screen and come up with the objectively best arrangement per ISA 101 high-performance HMI standards, but if operators keep making messes because their intuition about that system is wrong, maybe I should just change the way the machine operates to match.
  - jjmarr 2y ago
    It makes more sense if you consider the baseball player as a multimillion-dollar factory that cannot be brought down for maintenance.
  - elgenie 2y ago
    Volpe and Chisholm have honed and fine-tuned their swings over 20 years to produce results good enough to vault them into the top few hundred in the world at that particular craft. They have a lot riding on that existing swing. Pro baseball is an unforgiving endeavor in which small edges add up over the course of a six month season, and the rewards for skill follow a power law distribution such that being just a bit better has millions of dollars attached to it, but becoming just a bit worse can also mean losing millions of dollars. Changing swing path to get contact on a slightly different portion of the bat on a particular kind of pitch, possibly when looking for another pitch, perhaps just in particular counts, requires a lot of offseason work and carries no guarantees. The risk is similar to a from-scratch rewrite where the old code is thrown away; a very large portion of the time the resulting hitter ends up unplayable in the majors. Tweaking the bat shape, on the other hand, is a micro-optimization akin to a bug fix whose rollout is behind a feature flag: undoing it is as easy at pulling a different bat from the rack.
codexb 2y ago
I'm genuinely surprised this hasn't been done before now.
- pclmulqdq 2y ago
  The granny free throw and the belly putter are both better tools, but they are uncool. We can add the torpedo bat to that list.
  - renewiltord 2y ago
    Belly putting is anchoring to belly? That’s not legal.
    - soared 2y ago
      It was legal, until bad putters became very good at putting!
    - pclmulqdq 2y ago
      TIL. The new version of this is the "armlock putter" where you anchor to your arm instead of to your belly.
- bonestamp2 2y ago
  Ya, it's one of those simple design improvements that seem obvious once you see it, but clearly wasn't obvious because it took so long for someone to think of it.
Larrikin 2y ago
He never said why it's bad, just that players he thinks suck should continue to suck and he doesn't like that they don't suck anymore. He briefly alluded to a valid point but went no where with it about how it may affect little league and college with less money, but that is completely separate from MLB teams using millions of dollars for custom bats.
- basisword 2y ago
  >> He never said why it's bad, just that players he thinks suck should continue to suck and he doesn't like that they don't suck anymore. Bad players should continue to suck unless they put in the effort to be better. If you're a batter and can't hit the ball with the right part of the bat (especially experienced guys like Chilsolm) you're simply bad at your job. This is like getting a crappy NBA player and putting some Flubber on his shoes[1]. In all sport the tools are going to push performance a certain amount of but this feels beyond the limit for me. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119137/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119137/
  - pests 2y ago
    > If you're a batter and can't hit the ball with the right part of the bat But that is what they are doing? The bat is within size and volume limits. Many bats come in slightly odd shapes or weight distributions. Is it because this is "optimized" that it's bad?
    - basisword 2y ago
      It feels like one of those things where even though it’s within the limits of the rules, it just shows they need to tighten the rules. The end result is everyone having their own customised bat and it’s just a big waste of time. Better to tighten up the rules. If I had my way there would be one legal bat that everyone had to use. Sport should be about the athlete, not the tool.
      - percentcer 2y ago
pclowes 2y ago
[flagged]
recursive 2y ago
Oh no! Baseball might get slightly interesting! Quick! Ban the heretics!
vessenes 2y ago
Adding yet another thing for neurodivergent fans of baseball to argue over is fun! That said, some of this must be statistical anomaly. Let’s give it at least a few hundred at-bats per player using it. If you look at an exhibit of bats over time, you will see that size, weight, width and shape have all varied quite a bit between players even if on the same team and era, and this makes me skeptical that some new shape is really going to invalidate every baseball stadium’s length and field overnight. If it does, MLB will outlaw it. See aluminum bats for example. I’m not saying MIT physicists can’t help hitters with going deep, I bet they can. But given the tools at their disposal - bat shape in this case - I’m skeptical that they are going to create a new era of hitting for all. I guess we’ll see soon.
- cf100clunk 2y ago
  > Let’s give it at least a few hundred at-bats per player using it. Indeed, and lets also test against other ''new'' bat designs and materials i.e. graphene, carbon fibre, etc. so that we can hopefully ban them pre-emptively if they show improvements that are statistically above the latest trends in human effort and talent.
  - krustyburger 2y ago
    Contrary to the implication of the comment you’re replying to, MLB has always mandated bats be made of solid wood. Aluminum bats have never been allowed and have never been used. Bats made of other materials like the ones you mention would also not be allowed. This new “torpedo” bat is made of solid wood, just in a new shape.
    - vessenes 2y ago
      Thanks for the clarification. https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1freiuv/recalling_when_mlb_legalized_aluminum_bats_april/ https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1freiuv/recalling... this April fool’s video will give fun nostalgia. I guess the most accurate thing to say is that MLB at least thought about it for a second, long enough to get Jose Canseco to pretend it was happening.
kaycebasques 2y ago
If only the Yankees get access to it (e.g. they patented it and won't let other teams use it) then I could see it as an unfair advantage. In most other areas of America life, though, this innovation would be allowed or even celebrated. I imagine it will go the way of the brilliant strategic innovation a few years back of shifting defenders heavily depending on the batter's statistical hitting patterns. It'll get banned because it makes the game more boring. If home runs happen all the time, they lose their excitement. I imagine it's quite expensive or impossible to shift the outfield walls back farther in most MLB stadiums. I actually would love more of a no holds barred evolutionary battle in the MLB [1] but I know it's not gonna happen. [1] https://youtu.be/gTmLz9B8wls https://youtu.be/gTmLz9B8wls
- MajimasEyepatch 2y ago
  There are already other teams using these bats, and it seems like they will spread pretty quickly: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6243085/2025/03/31/mlb-torpedo-bats-players-intrigued/ https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6243085/2025/03/31/mlb-torp... I don't know why anyone would be upset about this, but baseball fans tend to be curmudgeons.
  - metadat 2y ago
    https://archive.today/R20Kz https://archive.today/R20Kz
- perlgeek 2y ago
  > If home runs happen all the time, they lose their excitement. So you're saying baseball gets more boring when people get better hitting the ball? Sounds like there's something fundamentally wrong with the sport.
  - conductr 2y ago
    So long as it's not a one sided advantage, the game will be fair and way more exciting. Even now, there's a huge difference in attending, and watching on TV, a game that is 1-0 going into the 9th inning versus a game that is 5-4 going into the 9th. Even though those are even matches at that point in the game, one of them feels painful the other has had some excitement. Good defense is not as exciting as productive offense.
deleted 2y ago
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jparishy 2y ago
I think it's quite cool (disclaimer: I am indeed a dirty Yankees fan) Hitting is really hard. If you feel up to it, and can find a public batting cage near you that has a fast pitch machine (usually maxes out 75-85mph which is 20+ mph less than your typical MLB fastball), give it a shot. When you hit the ball away from the sweet spot, especially on the parts closer to your hands, it really freaking hurts and throws off subsequent swings. If the few players who are using this bat tend to hit that spot naturally, it makes a lot of sense to modify the bat to accommodate it, within the rules like they've done here. Hitting is super, super difficult especially today with how far we're pushing pitchers. Love seeing them try to innovate. Plus, reminder, most of the team isn't using it. Judge clobbered the ball that day with his normal bat. Brewer's pitching is injured, and the starter that day was a Yankee last year and the team is intimately familiar with his game.
- ramesh31 2y ago
  I genuinely can't understand the thought process of a Yankees fan. If it's just a tradition thing, then sure whatever. But someone who watches them play and goes "yeah that's my team" is just mindblowing. They'll have a batting lineup that costs more than the opponents entire field, knowing full well they are all just hired guns who will be gone the moment the contract is up, and then you watch them in the playoffs against regular teams and it's just visually hilarious at this point. Like watching a bunch of NFL linebackers playing teeball.
  - techdmn 2y ago
    Some people want to back a winner, and they don't really get too worked up about the details. Another example would be Ferrari in early 2000s in F1. Biggest budget, most skilled driver, all the dirty tricks at all levels (on-track, technical, political), plenty of fans.
  - dionidium 2y ago
    > I genuinely can't understand the thought process of a Yankees fan. There is very little free agency in American sports fandom. People are (for the most part) fans of the team local to where they grew up. (This kind of bums me out as someone raising kids in New England, which is not where I'm from, and so not whose teams I root for.)
Luc 2y ago
Cool but this article is AI slop. It's borderline unreadable, though I guess it looks great to Google.
- floatrock 2y ago
  I caught on when I realized the same sentence was being written for the fifth time.
  - cf100clunk 2y ago
    OP here, and I also hate AI slop so I had a bit of a bad feeling about it at first, but then felt that the payload was more important than the packaging. Submitting ''pure'' content to HN is getting increasingly difficult.
  - inerte 2y ago
    I actually don't think this article is AI slop but instead a text length minimum so Google thinks there's enough content there. Now, I _could_ be an AI wrote it with this rule in mind, but the repetition feels more like the author said what they wanted to say and had to meet a word count quota, so they kept saying the same thing. At least this style of article has existed for many years before AI slop was even possible.
otras 2y ago
Change we can see is better than change behind the scenes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juiced_ball_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juiced_ball_theory, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/juiced-baseballs https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/juiced-baseballs
josefresco 2y ago
This morning on the radio, I heard this opinion (paraphrasing): "Misses become tips, tips become slices, slices become hits..."
islewis 2y ago
I've always wondered what the technological development of F1 would look like in other sports. This feels pretty close.
- cf100clunk 2y ago
  When the National Hockey League allowed synthetic sticks (aluminum, carbon fibre) in the late 1980s there was a quick uptake as players began to learn how to get greater puck velocities over the old wooden ones. The cost to the game is the phenomena of the exploding stick, which happens far more often than with the old lumber ones and can directly affect the outcome of the game as the dejected player skates away from a missed opportunity.
  - jdsully 2y ago
    They actually try to just block without the stick until the play ends and it looks rather silly. I've also seen them dive and punch the puck which doesn't seem like it should be legal but the rules seem to be limited to prohibiting grabbing the puck.
    - toast0 2y ago
      The rules for hand pass are: > Rule 79 – Hand Pass > 79.1 Hand Pass - A player shall be permitted to stop or “bat” a puck in the air with his open hand, or push it along the ice with his hand, and the play shall not be stopped unless, in the opinion of the on-ice officials, he has directed the puck to a teammate, or has allowed his team to gain an advantage, and subsequently possession and control of the puck is obtained by a player of the offending team, either directly or deflected off any player or official. For violations related to “closing his hand on the puck”, refer to Rule 67 – Handling Puck. > 79.2 Defending Zone - Play will not be stopped for any hand pass by players in their own defending zone. The location of the puck when contacted by either the player making the hand pass or the player receiving the hand pass shall determine the zone it is in. From the 2023-2024 rulebook [1], because it came up first in search. I don't think hand pass rules have changed. Basically, if your stick breaks when defending, you can go ahead and use your body to play and fling the puck to your teammates as appropriate (but not out of the defensive zone). OTOH, if your stick breaks when you're in the offensive zone, you better skate to the bench and either grab another stick or change out. Sometimes you'll see another player give their stick to the player with the broken stick and then go change. [1] https://media.nhl.com/site/asset/public/ext/2023-24/2023-24Rulebook.pdf https://media.nhl.com/site/asset/public/ext/2023-24/2023-24R...
fishpen0 2y ago
Ready for games at Fenway to be 90% HRs
- koolba 2y ago
  Reminds me of the late 90s with Sosa and McGuire.
  - cf100clunk 2y ago
    When talent wasn't enough.
deleted 2y ago
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ycombinete 2y ago
This is how modern cricket bats are designed, with the bulk of the wood located in the “sweet spot”. In fact they have undergone a similar evolution. You can see that in the variations history on the Wikipedia page [0], as well as the photo of the old bats versus modern ones [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_bat#Variations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_bat#Variations [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_bat#/media/File%3AHistorical_cricket_bat_art.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_bat#/media/File%3AHi...
do_not_redeem 2y ago
Sports advancements like this are super cool. This reminds me of how Dick Fosbury changed the high jump in 1968. It was nice of them to reveal this early in the season—I would have loved to see the drama if they revealed it during the postseason so other teams didn't have time to catch up.
wedn3sday 2y ago
This article is a great example of why baseball is such an incredibly boring sport.
nullbyte 2y ago
From the title I was expecting genetically modified Bats that could fly out and retrieve foul balls
jccalhoun 2y ago
Since golf has had all sorts of changes in clubs over the years and baseball hadn't, I had assumed the only reason this hadn't been done years ago is because the rules were very prescriptive.
- 98codes 2y ago
  I'm sure there have been bat changes all along the way, and if the Yankees hadn't scored 20 runs that day we wouldn't be reading about this either.
pigbearpig 2y ago
Two players used the bats. I'm not a Yankees fan, but all these articles are making it seem like the bats are the reason. That does not explain why the rest of the lineup went off. Perhaps poor pitching is the better explanation. Too much is being made of these bats. Also, golf club technology basically does the same thing. Everything is about making a bigger sweet spot. Oversize drivers and irons didn't seem to ruin the game.
- nemo44x 2y ago
  There’s a lot of debate in golf if the game had been spoiled at professional levels because of modern gear. Courses have been made longer to accommodate and it’s very likely there’s less reliance on skill today. All the optimizations are around speed today because with such huge faces and low MoIs guys won’t miss when swinging even harder. In fact you could argue golf should be more like baseball in that lower skilled players and amateurs use large metal clubs whereas pros use small wooden clubs.
  - alabastervlog 2y ago
    There do exist traditionalist golf leagues that use classic club styles and balls that are way less flashy than the modern stuff. I briefly looked into it after playing Golf Story on the Switch, which features an area where you have to use a set of historical clubs (sometimes with different names from the modern versions!) and found such leagues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickory_golf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickory_golf
    - nemo44x 2y ago
      Indeed and I can see the appeal on old courses that were designed for a ground game that doesn’t exist in the modern aerial game. Especially if you have firm conditions like in Scotland.
      - alabastervlog 2y ago
        Reading about these was the first time I was even tempted to take up golf. Smaller courses are really appealing—the huge courses of modern golf kinda stress me out, and I've also got a vague and not-strongly-held dislike for how much land they use, which, environmental and community-development effects aside, I'd think would also tend to make the game more expensive, plus, when they're so sprawling as they often are, I usually find them less-attractive aesthetically than a more-mixed natural/human environment. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be a ton of courses really designed for shorter-distance games, which makes sense when most players are rocking space-age tech clubs, but does make getting involved in it challenging.
jccalhoun 2y ago
It would be fun to see how far you could hit a baseball or golf ball if you could make the bat/club out of any material. Or how fast someone could swim if you could wear anything (like those suits that were banned from the olympics) and things like that.
assimpleaspossi 2y ago
My first thought is that there must be something very wrong about this. They have moved the skill of hitting from the player to the "skill" of the bat. I am surprised MLB allowed it. I don't see it too far different than corking the bat.
- kjkjadksj 2y ago
  Pretty typical for pro sports especially golf or swimming. The batmaker is probably pleased all the competitive amateurs are going to replace the bat in the closet with the premium bat shape and I’m sure they worked closely with MLB officials on this. No one polices this type of collusion.
mikeocool 2y ago
Interesting outcome of Saturday's game -- most of the Yankee's runs came as a result of their 9 homers, and they let up 9 runs -- which, defensively, is not great. The Brewers scored an average 4.78 runs per game in 2024. Kinda suggests the Yankees aren't all great at playing baseball, except for hitting home runs, but that's all that really matters.
- vonmoltke 2y ago
  The defense in that game was pretty bad. Five of the nine Brewers runs scored due to errors, and it was five separate errors. The game yesterday went much better, defensively.
metalman 2y ago
Love this! I helped make wooden oars, that were used by competitors in international rowing competitions, that had blades designed by someone at MIT, back in the day, on a computer(golley gee), but we made them by hand, and as they were, only wood, they were legal for use, and all the champions used them. we also made oars for "bostan bay bantry boat rigs" that won while crewed by inner city kids, we cheated a bit, and snuck some carbon fibre in but nobody even knew what that was, 18' oars, 2 kids to each, 16 oars per boat, plus the tiller. ash for the majors was sometimes sourced from granpa's farm in Pa, which he was proud of, take me into the woods to.show how strait they were, and how the deer had et, everything down to the dirt. next up, would be expoloring how a little texture from a poorly finnished bat, might add a little energy transfer to the ball
- vessenes 2y ago
  Rowing family here : what’s the current state of the art in oars?
  - metalman 2y ago
    what we were building was radical @ the time, and may still be. The design of the blades was essentialy flat on one side, and had a more complicated profile on the back the shaft was an I beam made from strait grained spruce, capped with ash, and then capped again in beach through the oar locks, and we snuck carbon fibre between the spruce and ash. the longest oars were 18', and it was possible to put a handle under the bench, and a shop stand under the oar lock and go out and bounce up and down on the blades 15' out from the shop stand we also made many oars for the international dorry races, which is regulated to "what could have been built useing traditional materials and methods" which ours were, cept for the cfd bieng done at mit we also made paddles, and handles, but paddles do better now, in strait carbon, but oars need flex, and work as a spring we had a couple of raceing skiffs at the shop and those sure are a hoot
    - vessenes 2y ago
      I’ve passed this on to the coach. She’s pretty traditional, but we’ll see what comes of it! Update: she’s impressed.
adregan 2y ago
Baseball is the king of misleading small samples. It’s usually best not to jump to any conclusions as the article does so early in the season (ban them! After 3 games?!). There is a lot of randomness in the data. And if the season proves that these bats are indeed juicier than others? Probably MLB will let it lie. Offense is down enough already and all of the recent rules changes are intended to support offense.
- basisword 2y ago
  Have they been using them in spring training? That's still early but a much better sample size if so.
  - adregan 2y ago
    Spring training at bats aren’t equivalent—hitters and pitchers aren’t approaching an at bat as they do in the regular season. But it’s no matter as we’re going to need to see a lot more plate appearances before the stats would be reliable indicators. Fangraphs[0] has a good guide to sample size. Slugging, for example, isn’t stable until 320 at bats. We’ll check back in mid July or so. Also, we haven’t given pitchers a chance to adapt. Perhaps pitching outside (now a thinner part of the bat) will take the force out of the hit leading to softer contact. 0: https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/sample-size/ https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/sample-size/
hnpolicestate 2y ago
The higher pitch velocity made something like this inevitable. Remember when a pitcher who threw 95 was a big deal?

306 points by cf100clunk 2y ago

Did it really take 125+ years for someone to realize the bat does not need to evenly taper? This seems like some seriously low lying fruit.

daedrdev 2y ago
No, different bats have been around forever, Babe Ruth's bats looks like a log compared to modern bats. However shifting the taper based on where a player gets most of their hits based on advanced tracking of their hit location is new.
abfan1127 2y ago
its less about even taper and more about moving weight/center of mass around. Youth bats have been doing that for quite a while. Camwood bats is a great example of moving weight around. In their case, its a training bat.
- koolba 2y ago
  Can you take it a step further with uneven wood density? Like growing the tree with part of the branch under compression.
  - sib 2y ago
    Oh, I like this. Feels like something you'd see in NPB with teams recruiting Bonsai masters to grow bats.
papercrane 2y ago
Different bat profiles have been around forever, and many players have their own custom profiles that they like. I think the key innovation that enabled this new profile is the accuracy and quality of data being collected. Edit: Here's an article talking about some of the bat tracking technology that MLB has deployed in recent years: https://technology.mlblogs.com/introducing-statcast-2023-high-frame-rate-bat-and-biomechanics-tracking-3844890264a6 https://technology.mlblogs.com/introducing-statcast-2023-hig...

lenerdenator 2y ago

Cool. Make it open-source for the rest of the league. Otherwise this is just more proof that Yankees fans are the same kind of people who would cheer when the casino wins another slot machine pull.

tdhz77 2y ago
Love this comment.
jjulius 2y ago
My father-in-law has openly admitted that the reason they're his favorite team is because they have the most money. Verbatim.
- 98codes 2y ago
  Remind him that he needs to turn in his interlocking NY for an interlocking LA.
98codes 2y ago
The concept is out there -- different players would have different tendencies that would require slightly different adjustments. This will make the team owners either do their own analysis, or come up with yet more excuses to hide the fact that while they could afford it, they won't.
treis 2y ago
Open source what exactly? It's a piece of wood turned on a lathe. Not an atom bomb

ramesh31 2y ago

Hard to imagine whatever advantage this is affording won't be nullified by pitchers within a season. The arms race is getting insane.

smeej 2y ago

Maybe it's just me, but if I worked for a school as close to Fenway as MIT, I sure wouldn't risk putting my name on custom bats for the Yankees!

lbotos 2y ago

Im glad this landed here so I can ask: Physics nerds, would a “larger contact area” give the baseball more velocity? I’ve been speculating that moving the mass lower effectively increases bat speed because its a “shorter bat”, but all of the commentary is acting like the larger barrel is “more power”. I’d expect larger barrel increases odds of contact, not increased power transfer? (But I also think of a car with bike diameter wheels and that could obviously change the power transfer)

acc_297 2y ago
Some are saying it’s about the center of mass being closer to the point of contact I’m not an expert but I think it has more to too with reducing vibrations along the bat and increasing the efficiency of energy transfer Again not an expert
janalsncm 2y ago
You are transferring rotational energy to the ball. Rotational energy is proportional to square of angular velocity. It is only linearly proportional to moment of inertia. So bat speed is more important than weight, all things considered. From what I can tell this is more about making it easier to make solid contact. Even if it lowers the moment of inertia, it’s more important that the ball goes on a decent trajectory rather than e.g. directly into the ground. A bigger radius means the ball will be exit closer to the plane of the swing.

whycome 2y ago

Are we entering the F1 stage of baseball and other sports? I bet there’s room for optimization with gloves and shoes and uniforms. I’m surprised teams haven’t made use of mobile recovery units when visiting away teams (instead of hotels). And there’s still gotta be ways to work around fatigue related to travel and time zone changes. I’m still surprised how basic and limited home team locker rooms can be. There are probably cool tech and social/psych solutions.

janalsncm 2y ago
They’ve been Moneyballing the game for a while with analytics to the point that the MLB had to ban certain defensive techniques. (Analytics says he always hits it there, so put a bunch of defensive players there.)
jgalt212 2y ago
> I bet there’s room for optimization with gloves Maybe so, but the demand is just not there with so many play ending up as home runs or strikeouts.
Affric 2y ago
Definitely already begun. Players diets, sleep schedules, low altitude flights…

currymj 2y ago

if it leads to more home runs i'm against it. if it leads to more solid hits and plays in the infield, i'm for it. unclear which one, i look forward to finding out more.

m463 2y ago

given the rules (solid wood, max 2.61" and 42")... I wonder if they couldn't have non-round profiles. Might be able to steer the ball, like a golf driver or add spin like some sort of racket.

LegionMammal978 2y ago
From the rulebook [0]: > 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. [0] https://mktg.mlbstatic.com/mlb/official-information/2025-official-baseball-rules.pdf https://mktg.mlbstatic.com/mlb/official-information/2025-off...

rsync 2y ago

My son - a baseball player - saw these in use this past week and noted: “ That was dumb… They should have saved them for the playoffs…” … and I can’t help but agree.

blahyawnblah 2y ago
You'd have to make the playoffs first
- janalsncm 2y ago
  https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_World_Series https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_World_Series
plondon514 2y ago
Boone can't even cheat well

colordrops 2y ago

Hasn't equipment been evolving since the beginning of the game? Why would this be out of line with that?

trhway 2y ago

Sounds like those hammer head tennis rackets. Strange that it didn’t happen decades ago. And nothing wrong with such innovation just making game more fast and powerful. The typical baseball bat's balance - very different from say a sword's - has always felt wrong to me, and i've just chalked it up to my not being a baseball player and thus not understanding. The new shape seems to improve the balance toward the centuries established for swords, etc.

RajT88 2y ago

Here is what I have learned from people who religiously follow various kind of sports which intersect with technology: A new tech will be allowed to stand if everyone can take advantage of it equally AND it does not make the sport too boring. Gotta get that ad and sponsor money.

benmathes 2y ago

I suspect this may result in more pitches away to these batters so they have to make contact on the narrower end of the bat. I.e. it's a move that may well have a counter move.

xxpor 2y ago
Folks will start to use longer bats then and crowd the plate. Of course that'll be countered with more inside pitching.
- bob_theslob646 2y ago
  >Folks will start to use longer bats then and crowd the plate. (Rule 3.02 states that bats cannot be more than 2.61 inches in diameter and 42 inches in length.) [https://www.mlb.com/news/baseball-bat-history#:~:text=(Rule%203.02%20states%20that%20bats,and%2042%20inches%20in%20length.) https://www.mlb.com/news/baseball-bat-history#:~:text=(Rule%...]

bgschulman31 2y ago

I think the media is attributing too much to the bats. I was at the Yankees game, and the wind was blowing straight out and hard. Many of the home runs I saw hit would have been fly outs on a day with more normal wind.

slumberlust 2y ago
You're right, we should ban global warming too!

pasquinelli 2y ago

> Unfortunately, the MLB reviewed the torpedo bats after the game and somehow had zero issues with them? "Unfortunately, the MLB reviewed the torpedo bats after the game and somehow had zero issues with them", isn't a question; adding a question mark just makes me read you with an obnoxious up-tone.

Affric 2y ago
The wonderful thing about human language is that often context implies meaning. It’s more than the words on the page.
- pasquinelli 2y ago
  what's that got to do with what i said?
RandallBrown 2y ago
The question is implied. "How could they possibly have done that?"

gradus_ad 2y ago

Innovations are always fun and disruptive at first, until the competition gets wise and adapts. By concentrating weight in the center of the bat hitters will be less able to protect the outside and inside of the zone. I don't expect to see the torpedos past June.

fracus 2y ago

I'm wary this will change baseball for the worse. Already, we've seen the power game become more and more dominant since the steroid era. You see less of the base running and nickel and dime baseball. It's all about home runs. If it were up to me, they would make the bats deader, not more lively.

poulsbohemian 2y ago
So much this - the game is better when the focus is on getting the ball in play. Likewise, I prefer the WNBA these days because it's a game of fundamentals rather than the 3-point shootout of the NBA.

throwaway984393 2y ago

[dead]

wileydragonfly 2y ago

Man, I got a really sweet bat on clearance the last time around they banned some new design. It’s great for the batting cage. Keep an eye on this one, might be $10 out the door next year.

stevage 2y ago

Next season everyone has this, and then what? All the historical stats are busted.

username3 2y ago

Would anyone care if he just used a shorter bat that didn’t get thinner?

eru 2y ago

Wow, that author is one grumpy fellow.

iambateman 2y ago

As a kid, my all-time favorite Christmas present was a Gen-1x baseball bat. It was my first -3 bat, and promised a new metal alloy that would help me hit harder. Talk about sparking the imagination! Without question, one of the high points of childhood was going out and trying to make that bat pop. A lot of long-term baseball fans “get it” when it comes to creative tech in the game and it’s fun to see something new with bats. The only thing I want to point out is that baseball (and all big sports) have always been a technological arms race and always will be. It’s just part of it.

freetime2 2y ago

Shouldn’t pitchers be able to adapt to this? If the sweet spot has moved, just pitch where the sweet spot isn’t.

Detrytus 2y ago

I think that’s a good thing. As an outsider who only recently started following baseball I can say that what makes the game quite boring is a difficulty mismatch: throwing the ball is easy, hitting it is quite hard (many MLB players have batting averages of 0.250 or below) which means that a typical baseball game consists of many throws, many strike outs and only occasional hits an runs.

tqi 2y ago

"you can’t just make a new bat and ruin over 100 years of baseball" If this jabroni was in charge of sports, there'd be no forward pass, no three-point line, no fosbury flop. Sports should be frozen in a specific moment of this guy's choosing. MLB batting averages have been on a steady, multi-decade decline as pitching quality and strategy has improved[1], so God forbid we do something to add some offense. [1] https://apnews.com/article/mlb-vanishing-offense-allstar-b487ff4d26bd053e2d91b6a8b084a53f https://apnews.com/article/mlb-vanishing-offense-allstar-b48...

scop 2y ago
Seeing “jabroni” said on HN made my day

prokopton 2y ago

Elly De La Cruz mashed two 400+ plus bombs to dead center with a torpedo bat today. Whatever helps the Reds hit homers I’m fine with.

tzury 2y ago

That immediately reminded me of George Constanza suggesting Yankees players should wear cotton at the ballpark to improve their performance.

gukov 2y ago

Not a baseball fan, but I’m curious if the MLB will go the F1 route (ie ban the “hack”) or embrace it as it will probably make for more entertaining games. Home runs are a good thing, right?

globular-toast 2y ago
After my initial surprise that teams have their own bats (presumably they don't have their own balls, though?), F1 was the first thing that came to mind. I don't follow F1 closely but I understand there is a constant struggle between allowing constructors to innovate (and thus having the constructors' championship in addition to drivers') and keeping the sport both fun and safe.

lern_too_spel 2y ago

Good. Baseball isn't a serious spectator sport. It's only interesting to statisticians. Now there will be more work for them to do, adjusting for bat type in addition to stadium dimensions, rule changes, etc. to compare players across eras. And more HRs might make it a little more interesting to spectators as long as the OBP doesn't increase to prolong an already too long game.

cf100clunk 2y ago
The statistical record might require a whole new set of asterisks for Torpedo-using batters.
d35007 2y ago
> Good. Baseball isn't a serious spectator sport. It's only interesting to statisticians What makes a spectator sport "serious"? The average MLB game had almost 30,000 spectators in the 2024 season[1]. That's a lot of statisticians. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2024/10/01/mlb-attendance-sees-second-consecutive-year-of-increase-tops-71-million/ https://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2024/10/01/mlb-atten...
- lern_too_spel 2y ago
  You can put a basketball game on anywhere in the world, and people will watch it, even if they haven't watched basketball before. People only watch baseball out of tradition. MLB didn't even have a play clock until 2023, letting batters step out of the box at whim and create even longer periods with no action.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - paulcole 2y ago
    > You can put a basketball game on anywhere in the world, and people will watch it, even if they haven't watched basketball before What the heck is this confident assertion based on?

wifipunk 2y ago

Matching their franchise record for HRs in a game in only 4 innings is wild!

ronnier 2y ago
Note that Aaron Judge hit 3 of those home runs (including a grand slam) and he did not use a torpedo bat.
- blankx32 2y ago
  Also note that Judge is a machine

daedrdev 2y ago

This seems to most help with guys who were hitting the ball most often not at the sweet spot. By moving the sweet spot to where they are hitting the ball, they might gain some power. A bat needs to be round, a solid piece of wood, less than a certain length and less than a certain diameter. The actual shape is not defined.

LeifCarrotson 2y ago
It's interesting to me, who is not a baseball player but a software engineer, that even at the level of professional sports the solution is not to just train the athletes to swing the ideal bat "correctly" but to redesign the bat to be sub-optimal but such that when the players use it "wrong" the right thing happens. The physicists and swing coaches and trainers and teammates have probably been telling Volpe and Chisholm for almost 2 decades to make contact at the tip of the bat instead of closer to their hands. But the solution turned out to be adjusting the bat and not the swing. Fascinating. I can sit in my office and deliberate on the location of buttons and indicators on the screen and come up with the objectively best arrangement per ISA 101 high-performance HMI standards, but if operators keep making messes because their intuition about that system is wrong, maybe I should just change the way the machine operates to match.
- jjmarr 2y ago
  It makes more sense if you consider the baseball player as a multimillion-dollar factory that cannot be brought down for maintenance.
- elgenie 2y ago
  Volpe and Chisholm have honed and fine-tuned their swings over 20 years to produce results good enough to vault them into the top few hundred in the world at that particular craft. They have a lot riding on that existing swing. Pro baseball is an unforgiving endeavor in which small edges add up over the course of a six month season, and the rewards for skill follow a power law distribution such that being just a bit better has millions of dollars attached to it, but becoming just a bit worse can also mean losing millions of dollars. Changing swing path to get contact on a slightly different portion of the bat on a particular kind of pitch, possibly when looking for another pitch, perhaps just in particular counts, requires a lot of offseason work and carries no guarantees. The risk is similar to a from-scratch rewrite where the old code is thrown away; a very large portion of the time the resulting hitter ends up unplayable in the majors. Tweaking the bat shape, on the other hand, is a micro-optimization akin to a bug fix whose rollout is behind a feature flag: undoing it is as easy at pulling a different bat from the rack.

codexb 2y ago

I'm genuinely surprised this hasn't been done before now.

pclmulqdq 2y ago
The granny free throw and the belly putter are both better tools, but they are uncool. We can add the torpedo bat to that list.
- renewiltord 2y ago
  Belly putting is anchoring to belly? That’s not legal.
  - soared 2y ago
    It was legal, until bad putters became very good at putting!
  - pclmulqdq 2y ago
    TIL. The new version of this is the "armlock putter" where you anchor to your arm instead of to your belly.
bonestamp2 2y ago
Ya, it's one of those simple design improvements that seem obvious once you see it, but clearly wasn't obvious because it took so long for someone to think of it.

Larrikin 2y ago

He never said why it's bad, just that players he thinks suck should continue to suck and he doesn't like that they don't suck anymore. He briefly alluded to a valid point but went no where with it about how it may affect little league and college with less money, but that is completely separate from MLB teams using millions of dollars for custom bats.

basisword 2y ago
>> He never said why it's bad, just that players he thinks suck should continue to suck and he doesn't like that they don't suck anymore. Bad players should continue to suck unless they put in the effort to be better. If you're a batter and can't hit the ball with the right part of the bat (especially experienced guys like Chilsolm) you're simply bad at your job. This is like getting a crappy NBA player and putting some Flubber on his shoes[1]. In all sport the tools are going to push performance a certain amount of but this feels beyond the limit for me. [1] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119137/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0119137/
- pests 2y ago
  > If you're a batter and can't hit the ball with the right part of the bat But that is what they are doing? The bat is within size and volume limits. Many bats come in slightly odd shapes or weight distributions. Is it because this is "optimized" that it's bad?
  - basisword 2y ago
    It feels like one of those things where even though it’s within the limits of the rules, it just shows they need to tighten the rules. The end result is everyone having their own customised bat and it’s just a big waste of time. Better to tighten up the rules. If I had my way there would be one legal bat that everyone had to use. Sport should be about the athlete, not the tool.
    - percentcer 2y ago

pclowes 2y ago

[flagged]

recursive 2y ago

Oh no! Baseball might get slightly interesting! Quick! Ban the heretics!

vessenes 2y ago

Adding yet another thing for neurodivergent fans of baseball to argue over is fun! That said, some of this must be statistical anomaly. Let’s give it at least a few hundred at-bats per player using it. If you look at an exhibit of bats over time, you will see that size, weight, width and shape have all varied quite a bit between players even if on the same team and era, and this makes me skeptical that some new shape is really going to invalidate every baseball stadium’s length and field overnight. If it does, MLB will outlaw it. See aluminum bats for example. I’m not saying MIT physicists can’t help hitters with going deep, I bet they can. But given the tools at their disposal - bat shape in this case - I’m skeptical that they are going to create a new era of hitting for all. I guess we’ll see soon.

cf100clunk 2y ago
> Let’s give it at least a few hundred at-bats per player using it. Indeed, and lets also test against other ''new'' bat designs and materials i.e. graphene, carbon fibre, etc. so that we can hopefully ban them pre-emptively if they show improvements that are statistically above the latest trends in human effort and talent.
- krustyburger 2y ago
  Contrary to the implication of the comment you’re replying to, MLB has always mandated bats be made of solid wood. Aluminum bats have never been allowed and have never been used. Bats made of other materials like the ones you mention would also not be allowed. This new “torpedo” bat is made of solid wood, just in a new shape.
  - vessenes 2y ago
    Thanks for the clarification. https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1freiuv/recalling_when_mlb_legalized_aluminum_bats_april/ https://www.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1freiuv/recalling... this April fool’s video will give fun nostalgia. I guess the most accurate thing to say is that MLB at least thought about it for a second, long enough to get Jose Canseco to pretend it was happening.

kaycebasques 2y ago

If only the Yankees get access to it (e.g. they patented it and won't let other teams use it) then I could see it as an unfair advantage. In most other areas of America life, though, this innovation would be allowed or even celebrated. I imagine it will go the way of the brilliant strategic innovation a few years back of shifting defenders heavily depending on the batter's statistical hitting patterns. It'll get banned because it makes the game more boring. If home runs happen all the time, they lose their excitement. I imagine it's quite expensive or impossible to shift the outfield walls back farther in most MLB stadiums. I actually would love more of a no holds barred evolutionary battle in the MLB [1] but I know it's not gonna happen. [1] https://youtu.be/gTmLz9B8wls https://youtu.be/gTmLz9B8wls

MajimasEyepatch 2y ago
There are already other teams using these bats, and it seems like they will spread pretty quickly: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6243085/2025/03/31/mlb-torpedo-bats-players-intrigued/ https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6243085/2025/03/31/mlb-torp... I don't know why anyone would be upset about this, but baseball fans tend to be curmudgeons.
- metadat 2y ago
  https://archive.today/R20Kz https://archive.today/R20Kz
perlgeek 2y ago
> If home runs happen all the time, they lose their excitement. So you're saying baseball gets more boring when people get better hitting the ball? Sounds like there's something fundamentally wrong with the sport.
- conductr 2y ago
  So long as it's not a one sided advantage, the game will be fair and way more exciting. Even now, there's a huge difference in attending, and watching on TV, a game that is 1-0 going into the 9th inning versus a game that is 5-4 going into the 9th. Even though those are even matches at that point in the game, one of them feels painful the other has had some excitement. Good defense is not as exciting as productive offense.

deleted 2y ago

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jparishy 2y ago

I think it's quite cool (disclaimer: I am indeed a dirty Yankees fan) Hitting is really hard. If you feel up to it, and can find a public batting cage near you that has a fast pitch machine (usually maxes out 75-85mph which is 20+ mph less than your typical MLB fastball), give it a shot. When you hit the ball away from the sweet spot, especially on the parts closer to your hands, it really freaking hurts and throws off subsequent swings. If the few players who are using this bat tend to hit that spot naturally, it makes a lot of sense to modify the bat to accommodate it, within the rules like they've done here. Hitting is super, super difficult especially today with how far we're pushing pitchers. Love seeing them try to innovate. Plus, reminder, most of the team isn't using it. Judge clobbered the ball that day with his normal bat. Brewer's pitching is injured, and the starter that day was a Yankee last year and the team is intimately familiar with his game.

ramesh31 2y ago
I genuinely can't understand the thought process of a Yankees fan. If it's just a tradition thing, then sure whatever. But someone who watches them play and goes "yeah that's my team" is just mindblowing. They'll have a batting lineup that costs more than the opponents entire field, knowing full well they are all just hired guns who will be gone the moment the contract is up, and then you watch them in the playoffs against regular teams and it's just visually hilarious at this point. Like watching a bunch of NFL linebackers playing teeball.
- techdmn 2y ago
  Some people want to back a winner, and they don't really get too worked up about the details. Another example would be Ferrari in early 2000s in F1. Biggest budget, most skilled driver, all the dirty tricks at all levels (on-track, technical, political), plenty of fans.
- dionidium 2y ago
  > I genuinely can't understand the thought process of a Yankees fan. There is very little free agency in American sports fandom. People are (for the most part) fans of the team local to where they grew up. (This kind of bums me out as someone raising kids in New England, which is not where I'm from, and so not whose teams I root for.)

Luc 2y ago

Cool but this article is AI slop. It's borderline unreadable, though I guess it looks great to Google.

floatrock 2y ago
I caught on when I realized the same sentence was being written for the fifth time.
- cf100clunk 2y ago
  OP here, and I also hate AI slop so I had a bit of a bad feeling about it at first, but then felt that the payload was more important than the packaging. Submitting ''pure'' content to HN is getting increasingly difficult.
- inerte 2y ago
  I actually don't think this article is AI slop but instead a text length minimum so Google thinks there's enough content there. Now, I _could_ be an AI wrote it with this rule in mind, but the repetition feels more like the author said what they wanted to say and had to meet a word count quota, so they kept saying the same thing. At least this style of article has existed for many years before AI slop was even possible.

otras 2y ago

Change we can see is better than change behind the scenes: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juiced_ball_theory https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juiced_ball_theory, https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/juiced-baseballs https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/juiced-baseballs

josefresco 2y ago

This morning on the radio, I heard this opinion (paraphrasing): "Misses become tips, tips become slices, slices become hits..."

islewis 2y ago

I've always wondered what the technological development of F1 would look like in other sports. This feels pretty close.

cf100clunk 2y ago
When the National Hockey League allowed synthetic sticks (aluminum, carbon fibre) in the late 1980s there was a quick uptake as players began to learn how to get greater puck velocities over the old wooden ones. The cost to the game is the phenomena of the exploding stick, which happens far more often than with the old lumber ones and can directly affect the outcome of the game as the dejected player skates away from a missed opportunity.
- jdsully 2y ago
  They actually try to just block without the stick until the play ends and it looks rather silly. I've also seen them dive and punch the puck which doesn't seem like it should be legal but the rules seem to be limited to prohibiting grabbing the puck.
  - toast0 2y ago
    The rules for hand pass are: > Rule 79 – Hand Pass > 79.1 Hand Pass - A player shall be permitted to stop or “bat” a puck in the air with his open hand, or push it along the ice with his hand, and the play shall not be stopped unless, in the opinion of the on-ice officials, he has directed the puck to a teammate, or has allowed his team to gain an advantage, and subsequently possession and control of the puck is obtained by a player of the offending team, either directly or deflected off any player or official. For violations related to “closing his hand on the puck”, refer to Rule 67 – Handling Puck. > 79.2 Defending Zone - Play will not be stopped for any hand pass by players in their own defending zone. The location of the puck when contacted by either the player making the hand pass or the player receiving the hand pass shall determine the zone it is in. From the 2023-2024 rulebook [1], because it came up first in search. I don't think hand pass rules have changed. Basically, if your stick breaks when defending, you can go ahead and use your body to play and fling the puck to your teammates as appropriate (but not out of the defensive zone). OTOH, if your stick breaks when you're in the offensive zone, you better skate to the bench and either grab another stick or change out. Sometimes you'll see another player give their stick to the player with the broken stick and then go change. [1] https://media.nhl.com/site/asset/public/ext/2023-24/2023-24Rulebook.pdf https://media.nhl.com/site/asset/public/ext/2023-24/2023-24R...

fishpen0 2y ago

Ready for games at Fenway to be 90% HRs

koolba 2y ago
Reminds me of the late 90s with Sosa and McGuire.
- cf100clunk 2y ago
  When talent wasn't enough.

deleted 2y ago

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ycombinete 2y ago

This is how modern cricket bats are designed, with the bulk of the wood located in the “sweet spot”. In fact they have undergone a similar evolution. You can see that in the variations history on the Wikipedia page [0], as well as the photo of the old bats versus modern ones [1]. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_bat#Variations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_bat#Variations [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_bat#/media/File%3AHistorical_cricket_bat_art.jpg https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cricket_bat#/media/File%3AHi...

do_not_redeem 2y ago

Sports advancements like this are super cool. This reminds me of how Dick Fosbury changed the high jump in 1968. It was nice of them to reveal this early in the season—I would have loved to see the drama if they revealed it during the postseason so other teams didn't have time to catch up.

wedn3sday 2y ago

This article is a great example of why baseball is such an incredibly boring sport.

nullbyte 2y ago

From the title I was expecting genetically modified Bats that could fly out and retrieve foul balls

jccalhoun 2y ago

Since golf has had all sorts of changes in clubs over the years and baseball hadn't, I had assumed the only reason this hadn't been done years ago is because the rules were very prescriptive.

98codes 2y ago
I'm sure there have been bat changes all along the way, and if the Yankees hadn't scored 20 runs that day we wouldn't be reading about this either.

pigbearpig 2y ago

Two players used the bats. I'm not a Yankees fan, but all these articles are making it seem like the bats are the reason. That does not explain why the rest of the lineup went off. Perhaps poor pitching is the better explanation. Too much is being made of these bats. Also, golf club technology basically does the same thing. Everything is about making a bigger sweet spot. Oversize drivers and irons didn't seem to ruin the game.

nemo44x 2y ago
There’s a lot of debate in golf if the game had been spoiled at professional levels because of modern gear. Courses have been made longer to accommodate and it’s very likely there’s less reliance on skill today. All the optimizations are around speed today because with such huge faces and low MoIs guys won’t miss when swinging even harder. In fact you could argue golf should be more like baseball in that lower skilled players and amateurs use large metal clubs whereas pros use small wooden clubs.
- alabastervlog 2y ago
  There do exist traditionalist golf leagues that use classic club styles and balls that are way less flashy than the modern stuff. I briefly looked into it after playing Golf Story on the Switch, which features an area where you have to use a set of historical clubs (sometimes with different names from the modern versions!) and found such leagues. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickory_golf https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hickory_golf
  - nemo44x 2y ago
    Indeed and I can see the appeal on old courses that were designed for a ground game that doesn’t exist in the modern aerial game. Especially if you have firm conditions like in Scotland.
    - alabastervlog 2y ago
      Reading about these was the first time I was even tempted to take up golf. Smaller courses are really appealing—the huge courses of modern golf kinda stress me out, and I've also got a vague and not-strongly-held dislike for how much land they use, which, environmental and community-development effects aside, I'd think would also tend to make the game more expensive, plus, when they're so sprawling as they often are, I usually find them less-attractive aesthetically than a more-mixed natural/human environment. Unfortunately, there don't seem to be a ton of courses really designed for shorter-distance games, which makes sense when most players are rocking space-age tech clubs, but does make getting involved in it challenging.

jccalhoun 2y ago

It would be fun to see how far you could hit a baseball or golf ball if you could make the bat/club out of any material. Or how fast someone could swim if you could wear anything (like those suits that were banned from the olympics) and things like that.

assimpleaspossi 2y ago

My first thought is that there must be something very wrong about this. They have moved the skill of hitting from the player to the "skill" of the bat. I am surprised MLB allowed it. I don't see it too far different than corking the bat.

kjkjadksj 2y ago
Pretty typical for pro sports especially golf or swimming. The batmaker is probably pleased all the competitive amateurs are going to replace the bat in the closet with the premium bat shape and I’m sure they worked closely with MLB officials on this. No one polices this type of collusion.

mikeocool 2y ago

Interesting outcome of Saturday's game -- most of the Yankee's runs came as a result of their 9 homers, and they let up 9 runs -- which, defensively, is not great. The Brewers scored an average 4.78 runs per game in 2024. Kinda suggests the Yankees aren't all great at playing baseball, except for hitting home runs, but that's all that really matters.

vonmoltke 2y ago
The defense in that game was pretty bad. Five of the nine Brewers runs scored due to errors, and it was five separate errors. The game yesterday went much better, defensively.

metalman 2y ago

Love this! I helped make wooden oars, that were used by competitors in international rowing competitions, that had blades designed by someone at MIT, back in the day, on a computer(golley gee), but we made them by hand, and as they were, only wood, they were legal for use, and all the champions used them. we also made oars for "bostan bay bantry boat rigs" that won while crewed by inner city kids, we cheated a bit, and snuck some carbon fibre in but nobody even knew what that was, 18' oars, 2 kids to each, 16 oars per boat, plus the tiller. ash for the majors was sometimes sourced from granpa's farm in Pa, which he was proud of, take me into the woods to.show how strait they were, and how the deer had et, everything down to the dirt. next up, would be expoloring how a little texture from a poorly finnished bat, might add a little energy transfer to the ball

vessenes 2y ago
Rowing family here : what’s the current state of the art in oars?
- metalman 2y ago
  what we were building was radical @ the time, and may still be. The design of the blades was essentialy flat on one side, and had a more complicated profile on the back the shaft was an I beam made from strait grained spruce, capped with ash, and then capped again in beach through the oar locks, and we snuck carbon fibre between the spruce and ash. the longest oars were 18', and it was possible to put a handle under the bench, and a shop stand under the oar lock and go out and bounce up and down on the blades 15' out from the shop stand we also made many oars for the international dorry races, which is regulated to "what could have been built useing traditional materials and methods" which ours were, cept for the cfd bieng done at mit we also made paddles, and handles, but paddles do better now, in strait carbon, but oars need flex, and work as a spring we had a couple of raceing skiffs at the shop and those sure are a hoot
  - vessenes 2y ago
    I’ve passed this on to the coach. She’s pretty traditional, but we’ll see what comes of it! Update: she’s impressed.

adregan 2y ago

Baseball is the king of misleading small samples. It’s usually best not to jump to any conclusions as the article does so early in the season (ban them! After 3 games?!). There is a lot of randomness in the data. And if the season proves that these bats are indeed juicier than others? Probably MLB will let it lie. Offense is down enough already and all of the recent rules changes are intended to support offense.

basisword 2y ago
Have they been using them in spring training? That's still early but a much better sample size if so.
- adregan 2y ago
  Spring training at bats aren’t equivalent—hitters and pitchers aren’t approaching an at bat as they do in the regular season. But it’s no matter as we’re going to need to see a lot more plate appearances before the stats would be reliable indicators. Fangraphs[0] has a good guide to sample size. Slugging, for example, isn’t stable until 320 at bats. We’ll check back in mid July or so. Also, we haven’t given pitchers a chance to adapt. Perhaps pitching outside (now a thinner part of the bat) will take the force out of the hit leading to softer contact. 0: https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/sample-size/ https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/sample-size/

hnpolicestate 2y ago

The higher pitch velocity made something like this inevitable. Remember when a pitcher who threw 95 was a big deal?