After hitting nine home runs on Saturday, the New York Yankees hit another four home runs on Sunday in a 12-3 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers, one of them courtesy of captain Aaron Judge, who hit three the day before.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. added two and first baseman Ben Rice hit another, amid controversy over the Bronx Bombers’ new “torpedo bats”.
Torpedo bats are a surprisingly different model, in which the wood is moved further down the barrel after the label and gives it a shape similar to that of a bolo, ESPN explained.
On Saturday, three home runs by Judge, and others by Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger, Austin Wells, Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm Jr., shaped the thrashing of Milwaukee.
The team’s manager, Aaron Boone, put aside the new and controversial bats to give all the credit to his players, ESPN reported.
“We’re just trying to be the best we can be,” Boone said. “That’s one of the things that’s been pointed out. I tell them all the time that we try to win by the minimum, and that shows in a lot of ways.”
What does the MLB rule say?
MLB has relatively straightforward bat rules, which are set out in Rule 3.02: “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”.
The rule also states that it may have a hollowed-out groove up to 1 inch deep, 2 inches wide and at least 1 inch in diameter, and that experimental models must be approved by the league itself.
Former Yankees infielder Kevin Smith posted Saturday that Aaron Leanhardt, a former Yankees executive and now a Miami Marlins employee, developed the torpedo cannon to increase mass at the sweet spot of the bat.
“You are going to go up with a weapon that can be better,” Smith wrote. “Your missed shots could be magazines, magazines, flares and flares, barrels. And it was true: it is fractions of an inch in the barrel that differentiate these results.”
The Yankees and their bats are back
Goldschmidt, leading off for the first time, started Saturday’s game with a 413-foot home run against Nestor Cortes; Bellinger followed with a 451-foot shot that was not initially recorded by Statcast.
Then Aaron Judge, with a conventional bat, hit a 468-foot shot that made the Yankees the first team to hit home runs on each of the first three pitches of a game, according to Elias Sports Bureau.
Bellinger was first introduced to the concept of the torpedo bat shape in a batting practice session last season with the Chicago Cubs, but he did not use it in any games. He was given a more advanced version during spring training this year.
“I started using this bat in spring or before, quite early, and I thought, ‘How good does it feel!'”, Bellinger explained. “It weighed an ounce less than the one I was using, but I think the weight distribution felt really good”.
Judge, who holds the American League home run record with 62 homers in 2022 and 58 more in 2024 that earned him his second American League MVP, saw no reason to experiment.
“The last two seasons speak for themselves,” Judge said. “Why try to change anything?”
Brewers manager in favor of new bat
Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy claimed to have knowledge of bat development and design after serving on the boards of two companies.
“Nowadays, players are doing everything they can to try to gain a legal advantage, and I think they should,” Murphy said. “I think anything that benefits the offensive game benefits the game.”
Read the full article here
