How a bate torpedo is made for a MLB star
The rise of the bate torpedo has transformed the industry for the companies that manufacture it. Here we tell you the story of a bat manufacturer.
Last Monday morning I got a Freddie Vargas, executive director of Tater Baseball.
At the other extreme: the New York Mets gardener, Starling Mars. Like all in baseball, Mars had seen the New York Yankees score 36 races and connect 15 home runs in a three -game sweep against the Milwaukee Brewers, with five of the Yankees headlines using bolos -shaped bats that immediately caught the attention of fans, locutors and other players.
Mars, who has used Bates Tater since 2018, was one of the many MLB players who asked about the bat, now known as Bate Torpedo, when fashion swept baseball. I wanted to order Tater some new torpedo bates to use them (at least initially) in batting practices.
“Well, it’s fashionable right now,” Marte said this weekend. “Let’s see what happens when I use it. I have to try it.”
Freddie and his younger brother, Jeremiah, who founded Tater Baseball in 2015 along with his father, Fred Mr., asked Mars to send them by text message a diagram of the contact points of his barrel. They designed the specifications of a new bate torpedo that will adapt perfectly to Mars, a process similar to the creation of a traditional bat. At the end of the day, four new bates were ready to be sent to Citi Field, waiting for Mars when the Mets returned to his series in Miami.
The torpedo -shaped bates are not new to Tater Baseball, a small family business that operates in an industrial park in Cheshire, Connecticut. The brothers played children’s baseball and over time they both played at the university, but Jeremiah was still in the last year of High School when the family had the idea of developing a training bat. Freddie became executive and founder director, and Jeremiah in co -founder and operations director.
Training bates are usually a bit lighter, which helps the player develop speed while concentrating at the optimal point of the barrel. They can be used to practice tee, soft throws or batting. Fred Mr. had engineering training (he still works in a plastic molding company, helping in Tater mainly on weekends), but none had experience in carpentry. Even so, they ventured into the business.
“I told them: ‘We won’t half it,” said Fred Mr. “What will differentiate us?”
They started with four models, manufacturing premium bates by hand in a shed in their backyard and focusing on training bates. One of his first models in 2015 was a playground with a torpedo -shaped, but it was for softball, not for baseball. Three months later, they bought their first CNC lathe, a sophisticated machine that uses computer controlled automation to create the desired bat form (the company is already in its second).
The operations soon moved to the garage and, finally, to the workshop in Cheshire, where Tater has 800 or 900 models. The facade is a retail store that sells not only the various training bats and game models for baseball and softball, but also other equipment with the Tater logo: batting gloves, sliding gloves, edge gloves, clothing and foam balls that are also used for training.
Jeremiah placed a lot of bates on a table. One pointed out.
“We manufacture what we call a low cargo coach with a torpedo. “Imitate the shape of the torpedo, so we expand the optimal point here and narrow it at the end so that the players have a visual representation of where to hit the ball. The players wanted an optimal point where they normally impact, and that was what occurred to us.”
Tater manufactured his first training bat with reduced load in 2018 and began to adopt the torpedo style around 2021, becoming a basic product of the company since its launch. Jeremiah said that 22 of the 30 major leagues teams use their training bats in major leagues and several others use them in their minor leagues organizations. The company works with players or coordinators for the batting leagues and coaches of old league batting.
The world of major leagues is a competitive field to enter; Freddie described him as “relentless.” The MLB must approve of any battery manufacturer and, although 41 companies have been approved, Marucci and Victus dominate the market with approximately 60% of the bates used in the major leagues, and Marucci owns Victus. Only a few companies sell even more than a few dozen bates to major league players, according to Freddie. Tater broke into the big leagues in 2018.
Jeremiah estimated that Tater occupied the seventh or eighth place last season, being Mars and the Los Angeles Dodgers gardener, Teoscar Hernandez, his most prominent players. Other players who use Bates Tater include the infielder of the Chicago White Sox, Brooks Baldwin, in addition to Travis Bazzana, the first selection of the MLB Draft of 2024, and Nick Kurtz, the first selection of athletics last summer. Freddie said about 150 professional players use Tater Bates at least part of the time.
However, Mars occupies a special place in the Vargas family. It was his first major league client, and he arrived in Tater for pure luck. A family friend named Rubén Sosa, who used Bates Tater, was Mars’s partner in the Dominican winter league in December 2017. Jeremiah tells the story: “Mars was a little decayed, he took Sosa’s bat, connected a couple of hits, and here we are.” Mars has used Bates Tater since then.
Gregory Polanco, Yan Gomes and Carlos Correa joined Mars as first clients.
“Actually, it was simply mouth to mouth, the creation of a good product and the provision of a good service,” Jeremiah said. “We like to say that we tirelessly strive to make the best bat in the world.”
The brothers are friendly and clearly love to talk about baseball and baseball bats: everything, from the deviation of the grain and the maximum diameter of the cannon until discussing what kind of hitting in specific situations.
“I love seeing the evolution of baseball bats,” Jeremiah said. “It is fantastic to see them in the games and see how they have evolved to help batters to be more competitive on the dish or give them an advantage.”
The manufacturing process of a bate torpedo is no different from that of a normal bat.
After sending Mars his contact data, the most appropriate way for him was analyzed. This is the most laborious part of the process. The overlap of the traditional Mars bat, compared to his new bat torpedo, showed that the traditional had an optimal point 22.4 inches from the handle, while the torpedo had 21.8 inches.
“A small difference, but a big difference,” said Fred Sr.
With the optimal point closer to the hands of the batter, the bat will have less flexibility, which means a better contact in the hit balls near the hands. This was the reason why some Yankees players, such as Anthony Volpe, changed to the torpedo form, since the data shows that their optimal point was closer to the hands.
“We recommend that players use a slightly heavier game bat for their torpedo than for normal bat,” said Jeremiah. “The reason is that, by slightly fattening the barrel at the optimal point, density changes slightly. The easiest way to describe it is: the greater the density, more pop; less density, less pop.”
Mars usually uses a 33.5 -inch bat and 30.5 ounces. After a conversion to define the specifications, it was decided that his bate torpedo would weigh more 31.5 ounces, and the manufacturing process began.
Wood (birch or arce) comes from Canada, where the coldest climate hardens the fibers. Yes, tariffs could increase costs.
“Wood holding tariffs is a complex matter at this time,” said Jeremiah, adding that they are seeing a 25% increase in raw material costs, in addition to tariffs, not including freight costs to send it through the border.
The wood is delivered in pre -cut cylindrical tables, of approximately the length of a bat. Each table is weighed and marked (the densest, the more impact performance). Then go to the lathe. You may imagine a craftsman with decades of experience, but Kyle Green, who drives the machine, is 20 years old and has been working in Tater since 16.
After cutting the bat in the lathe, it is sanded by hand, which takes about two minutes, and then hollows, hollowing the end (a maximum of an inch and a room). The process takes about six minutes; On a busy day, Tater can make about 150 bates. Finally, the bates are painted with a special lacquer. Jeremiah explained that there are also rules, since the MLB only approves certain colors for game bates.
Players, of course, love to wear their style whenever they can, so Tater designed unique colors to use in batting practices. They created a glacier color bat for Mars and also created a special design for Hernández for the home runs last year.
Hernández’s nickname is “Mr. Seeds”, so they replicated the David’s sunflower seeds logo, but replaced David by Tater, and instead of saying “the United States favorite seed brand,” said “the favorite seed brand of Teoscar”. However, as the name Tater appeared twice in the bat, an MLB officer prevented Hernández from using it.
When Hernández used the bat in the star game, Freddie said MLB fined the company “with a couple of hundreds of dollars.”
For now, the Tater baseball team will continue working 12 and 13 hours, while Freddie and Jeremiah receive calls on Bates Torpedo and produce them in mass for all their customers, as they did for Mars.
“My intuition tells me that there will be a place for the torpedo bates and that there will continue to be a place for regular game bats,” Jeremiah said. “But I think there will be a significant increase in the number of players who use bates torpedo.”
