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

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

#81

Post by anonymars »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #32
daedrdev wrote: post #4

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.

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 Chis…

I wish I could find it--I think it was on the Uber engineering blog--but I remember reading a post in which they talked about choosing a less "optimal"/"efficient" implementation in order to better cater to the available hiring pool: it's cheaper and easier to throw more money at hardware, than conjure up the necessary engineering talent

That resonated with me as I turned back around and gazed at the elegant, efficient, and inscrutable-and-difficult-to-debug Reactive-Extensions-based backend I was working on. Maybe Task> would have been "better" after all

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

#82

Post by kjkjadksj »

soared wrote: post #52
floatrock wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are stories like this in marathon running shoes (something like 3D printed to the athlete's exact gait and basically last just a single race) and swimming (the michael phelps olympics dolphin suit). I'm sure cycling and golf have been doing things like this since forever.

There are videos on YouTube of people using banned golf clubs that are super interesting - sand wedges with big holes in the club head so they slice through the sand, or comically large driver heads.

Golf actually adopted tech that probably ought to have been banned. Namely the modern ball and driver going from balata and persimmon. Pros went from driving it 260 yards to 325 sometimes longer and entire courses had to be redesigned as they would just trivially drive over fairway hazards and rough. Golf became a bomb and wedge game ever since as they can’t make certain historic courses terribly longer.

They are exploring the idea of rolling back the ball but the implications of that are endless.

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

#83

Post by abirch »

papercrane wrote: post #64
fishpen0 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

It could get even more wild. I could imagine batters having custom profiles for different pitchers. E.g. one bat for when hitting against someone who throws 100MPH four seam fastballs, and another when facing someone who throws 90 MPH cutters.

I'm fine with it as long as they don't change bats in between pitches.

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

#84

Post by mikeocool »

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.

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

#85

Post by SkyPuncher »

kaycebasques wrote: post #12

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…

If only the Yankees get access to this, the rest of the league will simply vote to outlaw it.

You see something similar going on in football, right now, with a play known as the "tush push". It's not a particularly complex play, but for some reason the Philadelphia Eagles can pull it off astoundingly better than anyone else in the league. In response, several teams are petitioning rules to outlaw it. All it takes is enough teams to vote for banning this play and it's gone.

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

#86

Post by metalman »

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

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

#87

Post by paulcole »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #38
paulcole wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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?

From showing basketball to people who haven't watched a basketball game before.

Just checkin’

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

#88

Post by Pet_Ant »

abirch wrote: post #83
papercrane wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It could get even more wild. I could imagine batters having custom profiles for different pitchers. E.g. one bat for when hitting against someone who throws 100MPH four seam fastballs, and another when facing someone who throws 90 MPH cutters.

I'm fine with it as long as they don't change bats in between pitches.

I'm picturing a caddy standing off to the side of the batter with a bag full of bats, sizing up the last pitch and say "May I suggest the pine with the conical twist sir?"

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

#89

Post by Pet_Ant »

ARandumGuy wrote: post #67
happyopossum wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If home runs happen all the time, they lose their excitement. TV ratings show otherwise - in every instance so far, HRs put butts in seats, and defense makes people change the channel. TV and ballpark analytics show this to be true. The common thought is that's why the league ignored abuse during the steroid era so much. edit - This is also the driving force behind multiple 'juiced ball' conspiracy theories.

While home runs are exciting, there are limits to that. For several years the MLB has been dealing with "three true outcomes", where a large percentage of at bats end in either a strikeout, walk, or home run. While this can be exciting for individual at bats, it becomes pretty boring if it's too common. This is because it invalidates every role except the pitcher and batter, and removes a lot of strategy from the gam…

I believe the opposite to that era is the "Dead-ball era" over a hundred years ago.

> During the dead-ball era, baseball was much more of a strategy-driven game, using a style of play now known as small ball or inside baseball. It relied much more on plays such as stolen bases and hit-and-run than on home runs.

This was likely caused by reusing baseballs more, so it should be easy to recreate,

> Before 1921, it was common for a baseball to be in play for over 100 pitches. Players used the same ball until it started to unravel. Early baseball leagues were very cost-conscious, so fans had to throw back balls that had been hit into the stands. The longer the ball was in play, the softer it became—and hitting a heavily used, softer ball for distance is much more difficult than hitting a new, harder one. The ball was also softer to begin with, making home runs less likely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead-ball_era

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

#90

Post by vonmoltke »

mikeocool wrote: post #84

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.

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.
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