Phillies hitters looking into using “torpedo” bats
It looks as though a handful of Phillies hitters will employ those words of wisdom. The hottest new thing in baseball in the opening few days of the 2025 season is “torpedo” bats, which moves the barrel of the bat slightly closer to the bat handle to help the batter. A Yankees minor-league coach, who used to work as a physicist at M.I.T., tried it last season with a few players, including Volpe.
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Phillies hitters looking into using “torpedo” bats originally appeared on NBC Sports Philadelphia
The old saying goes, “If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em.” It looks as though a handful of Phillies hitters will employ those words of wisdom.
The hottest new thing in baseball in the opening few days of the 2025 season is “torpedo” bats, which moves the barrel of the bat slightly closer to the bat handle to help the batter.
This isn’t necessarily new technology, nor is it “one size fits all.” A Yankees minor-league coach, who used to work as a physicist at M.I.T., tried it last season with a few players, including Volpe. The method relies on analysis of hundreds of swings from each player, and then moving the barrel to the point on each bat where it will make the most solid contact.
A quintet of Yankees hitters – Anthony Volpe, Jazz Chisholm, Paul Goldschmidt, Austin Wells, and Cody Bellinger – used torpedo bats for Saturday’s and yesterday’s games against the Brewers. The early returns were… strong. All five players hit at least one home run over those two games, as the Yankees posted 32 runs and 27 hits in a pair of wins.
“It’s not a thing you can just go and order,” said shortstop Bryson Stott, who has been in contact with the bat company he uses, Victus, about possibly working the torpedo into his arsenal. “You swing a thousand bats [in Victus’ “Hit Lab”] and they kind of tell you where [on the bat] you’re hitting the ball mostly. If you’re a guy that uses the whole bat… it’s not for you.”
Stott said he has already been to the aforementioned “Hit Lab,” so they already have the date they would need to outfit him with a custom bat.
Phillies manager Rob Thomson, who worked in the Yankees organization for a decade before joining the Phillies in 2018, says all this torpedo chatter is news to him.
“I just heard about it mid [last] week,” Thomson said. “I really wasn’t sure if it was a thing or not, if it was real, but I guess it is real.”
“We’re looking into it, I know K-Long [Phillies hitting coach Kevin Long] has made a couple of calls, we’re going to look at it, see what it’s about.”
Stott isn’t the only Phillie intrigued by the torpedo bats. A handful of teammates, who also use Victus bats, could start using them as well.
It may or may not help the offense. But based on what the Yankees have been able to do, it seems foolish not to give it a chance.
