What goes up must come down, and like the foam, the famous bat torpedo had its days of media relevance when the New York Yankees began to hit with a bang at the start of the season, and many thought it was exclusively due to this new bat, developed with technology from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which in the end turned out not to be entirely true.
Yankees’ numbers didn’t explode
And no, it is not a subjective appreciation, but it is the numbers themselves that have debunked what until now seemed to be the panacea of baseball and that today begins to be anecdotal.
But no one should be surprised or disappointed, the bat works in what it is supposed to work and some not only continue to use it, but by feeling comfortable with it, they could continue to choose it for their at-bats, such as Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Anthony Volpe, despite the fact that in recent days they began to have difficulty hitting. The same goes for Cody BellingerNot everything has been bad for Chisholm and Volpe, as according to some metrics on underlying batted balls, their barrel and exit percentage has gone up, although in Chisholm’s case, his speed has dropped by almost a mile per hour from last season to this. Nevertheless, the strikeout rate for both has increased dramatically, although this cannot be directly attributed to bat use.
The hype is dying down
Sometimes public opinion needs to find an explanation to cling to when there is none, when witnessing phenomena such as the large number of runs scored by the Yankees against the Milwaukee Brewers, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the Pittsburgh Pirates at the start of the campaign, and they found in the torpedo bats the best excuse to create a narrative that over time could not be sustained.
While it is true that they are not a panacea and that their use will not see better hitters born, torpedo bats are not out of place in theMajor Leagues. Undoubtedly, someone will find them more comfortable than others, and some will ignore them, like Aaron Judge. This is not going to substantially change the game, although it will not affect it either, and the furor will begin to give way. It’s the same old story.
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