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

thelibertyline.com

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

#11

Post by vessenes »

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.

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

#12

Post by kaycebasques »

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

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

#14

Post by jparishy »

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.

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

#17

Post by d35007 »

lern_too_spel wrote: post #2

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...

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

#19

Post by bonestamp2 »

codexb wrote: post #6

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

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.
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