Live data from Hacker News

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

thelibertyline.com

21–30 of 432 posts

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

#21

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…

> 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.

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

#24
post #22

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

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.

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

#25
post #17

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.

> 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-atten...

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.

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

#26

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 o…

If every player ends up with a bat custom tailored to their swing this will get very interesting.

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

#27
post #6

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

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.

Belly putting is anchoring to belly? That’s not legal.

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

#28

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 bann…

This has the potential to multiply the issues with Fenway and other older fields dramatically.

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

#30
post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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-atten...

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.

> 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?

Post reply on HN