Bat torpedo has not healed great MLB offensive anemia
Beyond the media impact, it is still early to determine the impact of the bat torpedo on the MLB offensives
Beyond the great media noise, and its outstanding participation in a historical beating of the New York Yankees against the Milwaukee Brewers, the new bates torpedo have not done much to cure the tremendous offensive anemia that has been affecting the major leagues (MLB) of the United States baseball for years.
Knowing that they are not yet used by most batters and that the 2025 season has barely celebrated 134 of its 2,430 games, it is very early to determine with certainty the real impact that the new bat in the MLB offensive will have in the long term. However, the show available does not open much space to optimism.
“People go crazy about something that, after all, is nothing. The bats meet the rules,” said the commissioner Rob Manfred To The New York Times on the weekend.
And how much reason is Manfred. The bats are legal and the offensive numbers of the league they direct speak for themselves. After Sunday, the MLB batters combined to hit .239, the second worst average of their 150 years of history, tied with that of 1888, when the ball- whose nucleus was still rubber, and not of cork (since 1910) or the current one, which is a mixture of cork and ground rubber- was more dead (1900-1920).
The last time baseball had such a low batting average was in 1968 (.237), a year in which the pitching was so superior that the league responded by lowering the mound of the pitchers of 15 to 10 inches, he shrinks the Strike area to the upper knees to the armpit (instead of shoulders and knees) and ordered the arbitrators to be more alert The balls by the pitchers.
Without belittling the enormous difference in the volume of play, the offensive behavior of the batters in the first clashes of this season is below or very similar to that of last year, contrary to what could be thought due to the passing euphoria unleashed by the Bat Pabedo.
Although a couple of unusual games-such as the 20-9 beatings (with nine homers) from Yankees to Brewers on Saturday, March 29, 18-3 of the Chicago Cubs to the Athletics on Monday, March 31 and 18-7 of the Boston Red Sox to the St. Louis Cardinals on Sunday, April 6), the average general racing was improved a little. 4.39), the other parameters are very similar.
2025 batters average less Hits (7.94) than in 2024 (8.20) and have the same percentage of PAHO (.711) last season.
Basically, the new bat torpedo has not improved the effectiveness of batters. While last year, MLB had an average of 24.25 balls at stake (a statistic that eliminates the strikeouts and home runs) per game, in the first days of 2025 the average is 23.90.
The pitchers are struggling 8.55 batters per game, a slight increase of 8.48 of the previous season. The basic idea of the Bat Torpedo is to distribute the wood in a geometric form different from the traditional one to ensure that the thickest part of the bat is where the player makes more contact. The standard bats narrow towards one end that is as thick diametrically as the optimal point of the barrel. The torpedo moves part of the mass of the BAT end about 6 or 7 inches below, giving it bowl shape, with a much thinner end.
The Madero gained notoriety when the Yankees TV transmission pointed to their differences during the match in which the Bronx bombers established the franchise record with nine home runs.
The gardener twice a more valuable player (MVP), Aaron Judge, led the butcher shop with his third three home run. Using the Bat Torpedo, Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger, Austin Wells, Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm Jr. hit a home run each, while the Venezuelan Oswald Peraza added the other.
The outstanding note of the matter is that Judge, who heads MLB with six home runs and 17 races driven so far this season and has 321 home runs and an amazing average slugging of .607 in his career, does not use the Bat torpedo.
Among the members of the Yankees who use it, it has worked for Volpe (4 homers and .703 of Slugging) and Goldschmidt (.324 with 1 homer), but not so much for Bellinger (.231, 1 h4) and Chisholm Jr. (.237/4 h4).
The Dominican Torpedo Elly de la Cruz used torpedo to beat 5-4 with two homers and seven pushed on March 31, but since then it goes 24-2 with a double and two pushed.
On April 3, the antealist of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Max Muncy, tried the torpedo in his first three shifts, which failed, but returned with his wood in the eighth entrance and hit a double of two races that tied the game so that he later decided Shohei Ohtani with a homer in the ninth. Ohtani, who does not use bat torpedo, has three homers this year and has 181 since 2021.
The New York Mets Puerto Rican Torpedo Torpedo, Francisco Lindor, who played the MVP of the National League to Ohtani in 2024, decided to enter the fashion of the Bat Alpordo, without much luck, until now, since it beats .172 without home run.
Gardener Davis Schneider, of the Toronto Blue Jays, has failed in his first 10 shifts of the season, using the torpedo.
Go back the mound (from 15 meters to 18 meters and 18 centimeters) in 1893, lower its height from 1969, qualify the foul as a strike (1901), redesign the Strike area (1969), ban the steroids (2004), include the repetition of TV and in more recent times force the pitcher to face at least three batters, place a clock to control the clock game rhythm and limit defensive formations, are elements that directly affected baseball.
But despite the fact that the Bato Torpedo has been “trend” for two weeks, there is still no concrete evidence that the game is impacting at a general level.
