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ASHBURN, Va. — The shirt did not look right on Washington Commanders receiver Terry McLaurin, but a bet’s a bet.

He put on Michigan colors. A player reared in scarlet and gray now had to don maize and blue thanks to Ohio State’s loss to the Wolverines last year. Two days after the game, McLaurin showed up in a team meeting wearing the Michigan top with teammate Khaleke Hudson‘s name and No. 7 on the back.

It’s a ritual that plays out in every NFL locker room during the season, a player losing a bet because the college he played for lost to another teammate’s school. It’s not about money changing hands; it’s about pride. It’s about showing up in another team’s shirt — or overalls. Maybe it’s the joy of seeing another player proclaiming on video that the other side is the best. Or maybe it’s seeing even the GOAT can be humbled.

“For me to pose in Michigan blue? That’s nasty,” McLaurin said, repeating the last line a couple of times for emphasis.

Of course, one of the first teammates to comment on McLaurin’s shirt was Commanders long-snapper Camaron Cheeseman, who also played at Michigan.

“You look good wearing our colors,” Cheeseman told him.

Even now, McLaurin shudders when retelling the story.

“It was kind of embarrassing,” McLaurin said. “But that’s why guys do it, because your money, that comes and goes, but the bragging rights, you wearing the other team’s gear and possibly having to post it on social media. … I definitely would rather lose my money than come in here in that Michigan blue, like last year.”

McLaurin eventually got the last laugh, though, pointing to the number of times he beat the Wolverines over his five years in Columbus.

“I hate to be this guy, they beat us, but I’m like, ‘When I was there you didn’t beat me Khaleke.’ I ride with Ohio State, so they lost. But when I was there, I got five gold pants if we’re going to really count it,” McLaurin said, referring to the gold charms given to Buckeyes players for beating Michigan.

McLaurin is hardly alone in having to honor a bet. And while these scenes go on throughout the season, it intensifies this week with a number of big rivalries — such as Ohio State-Michigan, Alabama-Auburn and even Iowa-Nebraska — kicking off.

‘Schmediums look good’

THE TRASH TALK and bets start because of a simple fact about NFL players.

“We have a competitive nature, that’s why we play this sport,” Atlanta Falcons corner Darren Hall said.

Competition is a part of being in the locker room — whether it’s arguing over basketball skills, cornhole games or even putting contests. When it comes to their schools, it gets more intense. NFL teams pick their players, but the players picked their colleges. Even though some players mention bets that could reach four figures, almost all said it wasn’t about money. They’re prideful; they’re loyal.

“Somebody at that program had to believe in you to get you in the school,” Cincinnati Bengals linebacker Akeem Davis-Gaither said. “And that translated into you getting to the NFL. It works hand in hand to me.”

Bengals coach Zac Taylor allows players to wear their college swag during Saturday walk-throughs, and it’s obvious who lost a bet from the previous week.

Arizona Cardinals defensive lineman Zach Allen, who went to Boston College, had to wear a Wake Forest T-shirt, courtesy of wide receiver Greg Dortch, after BC lost to Wake last month

“The shirt was like a frickin’ medium,” Allen said. “I made it look good though. … There are no examples of Dortch and I going against each other, so it’s cool stuff like that, it brings the whole 53[-man roster] together. People get invested because they enjoy seeing a 285-pound guy in a size medium.”

But, as teammate Maxx Williams said, “Schmediums look good.”

Williams should know: The former Minnesota Golden Gophers tight end lost his own bet to teammate Trace McSorley, a former Penn State quarterback. So he, too, wore a skin-tight shirt that was one size too small and therefore a tight medium — hence “schmedium.”

“It’s fun,” McSorley said. “It lightens it up.”

Cardinals quarterback Colt McCoy, a Texas alum, looked glum while wearing a Texas Tech shirt on social media earlier this year — thanks to a bet lost to a pair of Arizona teammates.

Cardinals coach Kliff Kingsbury, who coached Tech from 2013 to 2018, was not one of those who wagered with McCoy, however.

“I’m not wearing that burnt orange s—, I can assure you,” Kingsbury said.

But he saw the pain in McCoy’s face in the photo.

“He looks like his dog died, man,” Kingsbury said.

In 2018, when McCoy played for the Commanders, he got to see former Oklahoma punter Tress Way wear a Longhorns shirt every day in and out of the facility. They also had a standing bet every year: a six-pack of their choice.

“It was painful,” Way said about wearing the shirt. “But that’s the fun of it; college ball is the best.”

Hall lost a bet to Falcons running back Avery Williams when Boise State beat San Diego State. Hall was going to give Williams an Aztecs backpack, maybe a hat. As he said, “Nothing crazy.” But Williams showed up with his Boise State jersey, so Hall wore it all day.

“I sported it because he’s my favorite player,” Hall said.

“I could have given him my helmet, too, but I wouldn’t do that to him,” Williams said. “His big head probably couldn’t fit in my helmet.”

Players watch games together in the dining room during team meals Saturday night at the hotel. The Commanders, for example, have three TVs set up during team meals. Other times individual groups will gather in hotel rooms to watch games.

“You don’t want your team playing and losing,” defensive end Shaka Toney said.

If you’re from, say, Georgia, all comers are welcome. If they dare.

“That’s the worst part, because we all get paid pretty well, so a $20 bet here and there is not as bad as having to wear the other team’s colors,” said Falcons linebacker Lorenzo Carter, who played at Georgia. “It’s hard being a Georgia Bulldog. People see us and get intimidated and don’t want to make those bets. I haven’t won as much as I wanted because everyone’s pretty scared.”

‘Everybody hates Bama’

IT’S ALMOST UNIVERSAL in NFL locker rooms: Players root against Alabama. What’s also true: The Crimson Tide players have the trump card in many cases that quiet conversations even after a rare loss.

After all, they’ve won six national championships since 2009 under coach Nick Saban.

Take New England Patriots linebacker Mack Wilson Sr., for example. When the former Crimson Tide standout played with the Cleveland Browns, he had to pay off his bet to teammates Jarvis Landry and Odell Beckham Jr. after Alabama lost to LSU in 2019. So, Wilson showed up later that day wearing an LSU T-shirt to team meetings.

But he also wore something else: jewelry. He snapped a selfie wearing four championship rings, two on each hand, from his time at Alabama.

“Before I left the house to go to the team hotel I made sure I grabbed all my rings and brought them to the hotel,” Wilson, who won a national championship, two SEC championships and an SEC West title in his three years at Alabama, said. “I wore them and I was messing with them the whole day.”

LSU defeated Alabama again this season. Two of Wilson’s Patriots teammates played at LSU: cornerback Jalen Mills and defensive tackle Davon Godchaux. But Wilson was ready for them.

“I went 3-0 against them,” Wilson said.

Toney, a former Penn State standout now on the Commanders practice squad, summed it up: “Everybody in the NFL hates Bama. I like success. I respect what they’re doing, but everybody hates Bama.”

The Commanders have four players from Alabama — defensive linemen Daron Payne and Jonathan Allen, as well as running back Brian Robinson and receiver Cam Sims.

Despite Alabama losing two games this season and the national championship game last year, it will take more to kill the Tide’s vibe in NFL locker rooms.

“They’re Bama until they’re not Bama no more,” Toney said. “People give Bama slack for their losses. But until you see consecutive years — and it has to be multiple years; it has to be Bama don’t look like Bama. It’s tough.”

Teammate James Smith-Williams, a defensive end, summed it up: “Jon and Payne have like five national championships. What can you say to that?”

Jacksonville Jaguars offensive tackle Cam Robinson — another ex-Alabama player — said he knows who reigns supreme in the Jags’ locker room, even though rookie linebacker Travon Walker played on Georgia’s national championship team last year.

“You’re talking about probably the greatest college football dynasty ever,” Robinson said of Alabama. “It’s me and only me if I’m being honest. Josh [Allen] runs his mouth [about Kentucky]; I don’t know why, it’s a basketball school. Travon can talk a little bit. Daniel Thomas [from Auburn] likes to talk a lot. Who knows why? He can’t really say much.”

Falcons linebacker Rashaan Evans, who played at Alabama from 2014 to 2017, said in the past teammates were “too scared” to bet him when their school played Alabama. But running back Cordarrelle Patterson had no such qualms before his Tennessee Volunteers beat Alabama on Oct. 15.

Evans had to wear orange and white checkered overalls. It made him laugh. He also revealed, once again, the mindset of the Alabama players.

“It was bound to happen eventually. It was fun for me because finally someone beat us. It gets boring winning sometimes.”

‘Undefeated on the mic’

FALCONS LINEBACKER WILL Compton developed a reputation in the NFL for one thing in particular: defending Nebraska, which is where he played from 2008 to 2012.

Compton turned his orator skills into the popular “Bussin with the Boys” podcast, where he made the case this summer for an 11-1 season by the Cornhuskers. They’re 3-8. Last year, he dubbed them the best three-win team in college football history — it didn’t win any bets, but it did shut down some arguments.

While Nebraska was 48-20 during his five years in Lincoln, the school has only three winning seasons since, and none since 2016.

“One thing I always said about Compton: He was undefeated on the mic,” Way, who was teammates with Compton in Washington, said. “He could be dead wrong and find a way to win the argument. It would be him against the whole locker room. He was the best in that regard.”

Here’s how Compton did it:

“A group would gather around me and I’d catch one person who laughs or chuckles whose team got destroyed,” he said. “I’d defend myself and immediately point at the other loser in the room and get the spotlight on him and throw seven different kinds of smoke on that guy until nothing was said about Nebraska.”

But even Compton has to pay up on his bets. And he knows the payoff might occur again this week when Iowa plays Nebraska, courtesy of his yearly wager with San Francisco 49ers tight end George Kittle.

If Nebraska loses for the eighth consecutive time to the Hawkeyes, Compton will record yet another video. In it, he’ll have to proclaim Iowa’s superiority and shout out the Hawkeyes on social media once again.

In 2020, Compton looked as if he was being forced to read a statement on video. After declaring he wasn’t going to “talk about me being 2-0 [against Iowa], getting player of the game one year; that’s irrelevant,” Compton took a deep breath and looked away from the camera.

“They are the big brother of the border. They are the more superior program.”

Nine seconds passed before he continued.

“I wish I had committed to Kirk Ferentz and the Iowa Hawkeyes back in 2008, and I wish I had never went to Nebraska because Iowa is the better football team.” He then called Kittle a “sick SOB” for making him do the video.

But Compton isn’t about to change.

“I s— talk,” he said. “I still get texts from guys I played with. They’ll tell me they tune in to see what Nebraska is doing — when they’re doing bad they’ll shoot me a message. They’ll tell me they want to see if they’re winning or losing to know what state of mind I’ll be in.”

Nor are players on other teams about to change. They enjoy it too much.

“Definitely it’s fun,” Wilson said. “It’s almost every day someone brings up some story from college, whether it’s about them or in general. We’re always talking trash.”

Undefeated against the GOAT

IN EIGHT SEASONS playing with Tom Brady in New England, there’s one game former NFL safety Nate Ebner never lost: the Ohio State-Michigan game. Every year, Brady, perhaps Michigan’s most famous football alum, was convinced it was The Year. It wasn’t. So, eight times he had to pay off a bet to his teammate from Ohio State.

After a while, Ebner, who played with Brady from 2012 to 2019, wanted to be more creative in what he asked Brady to do after a Michigan loss. And because there were two Ohio State players and two Michigan players involved, Ebner knew what to do: Have them strike an O-H-I-O pose. Brady formed the H; defensive lineman Chase Winovich was the I, and ex-Buckeye John Simon bookended the O’s with Ebner.

“[Winovich] is probably one of the most annoying Michigan players of all time,” Ebner said. “There was nothing better than to see him do it with us.”

It led to a photo Ebner posted on his Instagram page. It wasn’t the first time Brady had to swallow his pride after a bet, either: In 2012, he wore then-teammate Mike Vrabel’s Ohio State jersey over his pads in practice.

Seven years later, it was Ebner’s turn to strike a pose with Brady that Ohio State fans adored. He said Brady was a good sport for paying off the bet. He says Brady is the best quarterback of all time, but Ebner knows he has an upper hand in one area. And by the time Michigan beat Ohio State last year — its first win since 2011 — Ebner was on to the Giants and Brady was with Tampa Bay.

“You can see the look on his face like, ‘I can’t believe I’m doing this right now,'” Ebner said of the 2019 photo. “He didn’t have a lot to say, but he did say, ‘I’m never going to live this down.’ … Maybe I could get with some charities around Columbus to raise money with that picture because it’s such a special Ohio State picture. Maybe one day I’ll get Tom to sign a copy for me.”

Mike Rothstein, Ben Baby, Mike Reiss, Josh Weinfuss and Michael DiRocco contributed to this story.

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What are torpedo bats? Are they legal? What to know about MLB’s hottest trend

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April 5, 2025

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What are torpedo bats? Are they legal? What to know about MLB's hottest trend

The opening weekend of the 2025 MLB season was taken over by a surprise star — torpedo bats.

The bowling pin-shaped bats became the talk of the sport after the Yankees’ home run onslaught on the first Saturday of the season put it in the spotlight and the buzz hasn’t slowed since.

What exactly is a torpedo bat? How does it help hitters? And how is it legal? Let’s dig in.

Read: An MIT-educated professor, the Yankees and the bat that could be changing baseball

What is a torpedo bat and why is it different from a traditional MLB bat?

The idea of the torpedo bat is to take a size format — say, 34 inches and 32 ounces — and distribute the wood in a different geometric shape than the traditional form to ensure the fattest part of the bat is located where the player makes the most contact. Standard bats taper toward an end cap that is as thick diametrically as the sweet spot of the barrel. The torpedo bat moves some of the mass on the end of the bat about 6 to 7 inches lower, giving it a bowling-pin shape, with a much thinner end.

How does it help hitters?

The benefits for those who like swinging with it — and not everyone who has swung it likes it — are two-fold. Both are rooted in logic and physics. The first is that distributing more mass to the area of most frequent contact aligns with players’ swing patterns and provides greater impact when bat strikes ball. Players are perpetually seeking ways to barrel more balls, and while swings that connect on the end of the bat and toward the handle probably will have worse performance than with a traditional bat, that’s a tradeoff they’re willing to make for the additional slug. And as hitters know, slug is what pays.

The second benefit, in theory, is increased bat speed. Imagine a sledgehammer and a broomstick that both weigh 32 ounces. The sledgehammer’s weight is almost all at the end, whereas the broomstick’s is distributed evenly. Which is easier to swing fast? The broomstick, of course, because shape of the sledgehammer takes more strength and effort to move. By shedding some of the weight off the end of the torpedo bat and moving it toward the middle, hitters have found it swings very similarly to a traditional model but with slightly faster bat velocity.

Why did it become such a big story so early in the 2025 MLB season?

Because the New York Yankees hit nine home runs in a game Saturday and Michael Kay, their play-by-play announcer, pointed out that some of them came from hitters using a new bat shape. The fascination was immediate. While baseball, as an industry, has implemented forward-thinking rules in recent seasons, the modification to something so fundamental and known as the shape of a bat registered as bizarre. The initial response from many who saw it: How is this legal?

OK. How is this legal?

Major League Baseball’s bat regulations are relatively permissive. Currently, the rules allow for a maximum barrel diameter of 2.61 inches, a maximum length of 42 inches and a smooth and round shape. The lack of restrictions allows MLB’s authorized bat manufacturers to toy with bat geometry and for the results to still fall within the regulations.

Who came up with the idea of using them?

The notion of a bowling-pin-style bat has kicked around baseball for years. Some bat manufacturers made smaller versions as training tools. But the version that’s now infiltrating baseball goes back two years when a then-Yankees coach named Aaron Leanhardt started asking hitters how they should counteract the giant leaps in recent years made by pitchers.

When Yankees players responded that bigger barrels would help, Leanhardt — an MIT-educated former Michigan physics professor who left academia to work in the sports industry — recognized that as long as bats stayed within MLB parameters, he could change their geometry to make them a reality. Leanhardt, who left the Yankees to serve as major league field coordinator for the Miami Marlins over the winter, worked with bat manufacturers throughout the 2023 and 2024 seasons to make that a reality.

When did it first appear in MLB games?

It’s unclear specifically when. But Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton used a torpedo bat last year and went on a home run-hitting rampage in October that helped send the Yankees to the World Series. New York Mets star Francisco Lindor also used a torpedo-style bat last year and went on to finish second in National League MVP voting.

Who are some of the other notable early users of torpedo bats?

In addition to Stanton and Lindor, Yankees hitters Anthony Volpe, Austin Wells, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger and Paul Goldschmidt have used torpedoes to great success. Others who have used them in games include Tampa Bay’s Junior Caminero, Minnesota’s Ryan Jeffers and Toronto’s Davis Schneider. And that’s just the beginning. Hundreds more players are expected to test out torpedoes — and perhaps use them in games — in the coming weeks.

How is this different from a corked bat?

Corking bats involves drilling a hole at the end of the bat, filling it in and capping it. The use of altered bats allows players to swing faster because the material with which they replace the wood — whether it’s cork, superballs or another material — is lighter. Any sort of bat adulteration is illegal and, if found, results in suspension.

Could a rule be changed to ban them?

Could it happen? Sure. Leagues and governing bodies have put restrictions on equipment they believe fundamentally altered fairness. Stick curvature is limited in hockey. Full-body swimsuits made of polyurethane and neoprene are banned by World Aquatics. But officials at MLB have acknowledged that the game’s pendulum has swung significantly toward pitching in recent years, and if an offensive revolution comes about because of torpedo bats — and that is far from a guarantee — it could bring about more balance to the game. If that pendulum swings too far, MLB could alter its bat regulations, something it has done multiple times already this century.

So the torpedo bat is here to stay?

Absolutely. Bat manufacturers are cranking them out and shipping them to interested players with great urgency. Just how widely the torpedo bat is adopted is the question that will play out over the rest of the season. But it has piqued the curiosity of nearly every hitter in the big leagues, and just as pitchers toy with new pitches to see if they can marginally improve themselves, hitters will do the same with bats.

Comfort is paramount with a bat, so hitters will test them during batting practice and in cage sessions before unleashing them during the game. As time goes on, players will find specific shapes that are most comfortable to them and best suit their swing during bat-fitting sessions — similar to how golfers seek custom clubs. But make no mistake: This is an almost-overnight alteration of the game, and “traditional or torpedo” is a question every big leaguer going forward will ask himself.

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‘It’s taken on a life of its own’: Inside the 48 hours torpedo bats launched into baseball lore

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'It's taken on a life of its own': Inside the 48 hours torpedo bats launched into baseball lore

At 1:54 ET on Saturday afternoon, New York Yankees play-by-play man Michael Kay lit the fuse on what will be remembered as either one of the most metamorphic conversations in baseball history or one of its strangest.

During spring training, someone in the organization had mentioned to Kay that the team’s analytics department had counseled players on where pitches tended to strike their bats, and with subsequent buy-in from some of the players, bats had been designed around that information. In the hours before the Yankees’ home game against the Brewers that day, Kay told the YES Network production staff about this, alerting them so they could look for an opportunity to highlight the equipment.

After the Yankees clubbed four homers in the first inning, a camera zoomed in on Jazz Chisholm Jr.‘s bat in the second inning. “You see the shape of Chisholm’s bat…” Kay said on air. “It’s got a big barrel on it,” Paul O’Neill responded, before Kay went on to describe the analysis behind the bat shaped like a torpedo.

Chisholm singled to left field, and after Anthony Volpe worked the count against former teammate Nestor Cortes to a full count, Volpe belted a home run to right field using the same kind of bat. A reporter watching the game texted Kay: Didn’t he hit the meat part of the bat you were talking about — just inside where the label normally is?

Yep, Kay responded. Within an hour of Kay’s commentary, the video of Chisholm’s bat and Kay’s exchange with O’Neill was posted on multiple platforms of social media, amplified over and over. What happened over the next 48 hours was what you get when you mix the power of social media and the desperation of a generation of beleaguered hitters. Batting averages are at a historic low, strikeout rates at a historic high, and on a sunny spring day in the Bronx, here were the Yankees blasting baseballs into the seats with what seemed to be a strangely shaped magic bat.

An oasis of offense had formed on the horizon, and hitters — from big leaguers to Little Leaguers, including at least one member of Congress — paddled toward it furiously. Acres of trees will be felled and shaped to feed the thirst for this new style of bats. Last weekend, one bat salesman asked his boss, “What the heck have we done?”

Jared Smith, CEO of bat-maker Victus, said, “I’ve been making bats for 15, 16 years. … This is the most talked-about thing in the industry since I started. And I hope we can make better-performing bats that work for players.”

According to Bobby Hillerich, the vice president of production at Hillerich & Bradsby, his company — which is based in Louisville, Kentucky, and makes Louisville Slugger bats — had produced 20 versions of the torpedo bat as of this past Saturday, and in less than a week, that number has tripled as players and teams continually call in their orders.

Even though Saturday marked its launch into the mainstream, this shape of bat has actually been around for a while. Hillerich & Bradsby had its first contact with a team about the style in 2021 and had nondisclosure agreements with four teams as the bat evolved; back then, it was referred to as the “bowling pin” bat. The Cubs’ Nico Hoerner was the first major leaguer to try it — and apparently wasn’t comfortable with it. Cody Bellinger tried it when he was with the Cubs before joining the Yankees during the offseason.

Before Atlanta took the field Sunday night, Braves catcher Drake Baldwin recalled trying one in the Arizona Fall League last year (noting that his first impression was that it “looked weird”). Mets shortstop Francisco Lindor used it in 2024, in a year in which he would finish second in the NL MVP voting; Lindor’s was a little different from Volpe’s version, with a cup hollowed out at the end of the bat. Giancarlo Stanton swung one throughout his playoff surge last fall, but no one in the media noticed, perhaps because of how the pitch-black color of Stanton’s bat camouflaged the shape.

Minnesota manager Rocco Baldelli saw one in the Twins’ dugout during spring training and picked it up, his attention drawn to the unusual shape. “What the hell is this thing?” he asked, wondering aloud whether the design was legal. When he was assured it was, he put it back down.

Baldelli’s experience reflected the way hitters have used and assessed bats since the advent of baseball: They’ll pick up bats and see how they feel, their interest fueled by the specter of success. Tony Gwynn won eight batting titles, and many teammates and opposing hitters — Barry Bonds among them — asked whether they could inspect his bats. The torpedo bat’s arrival was simply the latest version of that long-held search for the optimal tool.

On Opening Day, eight teams had some version of the torpedo bat within their stock, according to one major league source. But with video of the Yankees’ home runs being hit off unusual bats saturating social media Saturday afternoon, the phone of Kevin Uhrhan, pro bat sales rep for Louisville Slugger, blew up with requests for torpedo bats. James Rowson, the hitting coach of the Yankees, began to get text inquiries — about 100, he later estimated. Everyone wanted to know about the bat; everyone wanted to get their own.

In San Diego, Braves players asked about the bats, and by Sunday morning, equipment manager Calvin Minasian called in the team’s order. By the middle of the week, all 30 teams had asked for the bats. “Every team started trying to get orders in,” Hillerich said. “We’re trying to scramble to get wood. And then it was: How fast can we get this to retail?”

Victus produces the bats Chisholm and Volpe are using and has made them available for retail. Three senior players, all in their 70s, stopped by the Victus store to ask about the torpedoes. A member of Congress who plays baseball reached out to Louisville Slugger.

The Cincinnati Reds contacted Hillerich & Bradsby, saying, “We need you in Cincinnati on Monday ASAP,” and soon after, Uhrhan and pro bat production manager Brian Hillerich, Bobby’s brother, made the 90-minute drive from the company’s factory in Louisville with test bats.

Reds star Elly De La Cruz tried a few, decided on a favorite and used it for a career performance that night.

“You can think in New York, maybe there was wind,” Bobby Hillerich said. “Elly hits two home runs and gets seven RBIs. That just took it to a whole new level.”

A few days after the Yankees’ explosion, Aaron Leanhardt, who had led New York’s effort to customize its bats as a minor league hitting coordinator before being hired by the Marlins as their field coordinator, was in the middle of a horseshoe of reporters, explaining the background. “There are a lot more cameras here today than I’m used to,” he said, laughing.

Stanton spoke with reporters about the simple concept behind the bat: build a design for where a hitter is most likely to make contact. “You wonder why no one has thought of it before, for sure,” Stanton said. “I didn’t know if it was, like, a rule-based thing of why they were shaped like that.”

Over and over, MLB officials assured those asking: Yes, the bats are legal and meet the sport’s equipment specifications. Trevor Megill, the Brewers’ closer, complained about the bats, calling them like “something used in slow-pitch softball,” but privately, baseball officials were thrilled by the possibility of seeing offense goosed, something they had been attempting through rule change in recent years.

“It’s all the rage right now, given what transpired over the weekend,” said Jeremy Zoll, assistant general manager of the Twins. “I’m sure more and more guys are going to experiment with it as a result, just to see if it’s something they like.”

That personal preference is a factor for which some front office types believe the mass orders of the bats don’t account: The Yankees’ recommendations to each hitter were based on months of past data of how that player tended to strike the ball. This was not about a one-size-fits all bat; it was about precise bat measurements that reflected an individual player’s swing.

“I had never heard of it. I’ve used the same bat for nine years, so I think I’ll stick with that,” White Sox outfielder Andrew Benintendi said. “It’s pretty interesting. It makes sense. If it works for a guy, good for him. If it doesn’t, stick with what you got.”

As longtime player Eric Hosmer explained on the “Baseball Tonight” podcast, the process is a lot like what players can do in golf: look for clubs customized for a player’s particular swing. And, he added, hitting coaches might begin to think more about which bat might be most effective against particular pitchers. If a pitcher tends to throw inside, a torpedo bat could be more effective; if a pitcher is more effective outside, maybe a larger barrel would be more appropriate.

That’s the key, according to an agent representing a player who ordered a bat: “You need years of hitting data in the big leagues to dial it in and hopefully get a better result. He’s still tinkering with it; he may not even use it in a game. … I think of it like switching your irons in golf to blades: It will feel a little different and take some adjusting, and it may even change your swing subtly.”

Two days after the home run explosion, Boone said, “You’re just trying to just get what you can on the margins, move the needle a little bit. And that’s really all you’re going to do. I don’t think this is some revelation to where we’re going to be — it’s not related to the weekend that we had, for example. I don’t think it’s that. Maybe in some cases, for some players it may help them incrementally. That’s how I view it.”

“I’m kind of starting to smile at it a little more … a lot of things that aren’t real.”

Said the player agent: “It’s not an aluminum bat with plutonium in it like everyone is making it out to be.”

Reliever Adam Ottavino watched this all play out, with his 15 years of experience. “It’s the Yankees and they scored a million runs in the first few games, and it’s cool to hate the Yankees and it’s cool to look for the bogeyman,” Ottavino said, “and that’s what some people are going to do, and [you] can’t really stop that. But there’s also a lot of misinformation and noneducation on it too.”

Major league baseball mostly evolves at a glacial pace. For example, the sport is well into the second century of complaints about the surface of the ball and the debate over financial disparity among teams. From time to time, however, baseball has its eclipses, moments that command full attention and inspire change. On a “Sunday Night Baseball” game on May 18, 2008, an umpire’s botched home run call at Yankee Stadium compelled MLB to implement the first instant replay. Buster Posey’s ankle was shattered in a home plate collision in May 2011, imperiling the career of the young star, and new rules about that type of play were rewritten.

The torpedo bat eruption could turn out to be transformative, a time when the industry became aware how a core piece of equipment has been taken for granted and aware that bats could be more precisely designed to augment the ability of each hitter. Or this could all turn out to be a wild overreaction to an outlier day of home runs against a pitching staff having a really bad day.

On Thursday, Cortes — who had been hammered for five homers over two innings in Yankee Stadium — shut out the Reds for six innings.

In Baltimore, Bregman, who had tried the torpedo bat earlier this week, reverted to his usual stock and had three hits against the Orioles, including a home run. Afterward, Bregman said, “It’s the hitter. Not the bat.”

This story was also reported by Jeff Passan, Jorge Castillo, Jesse Rogers and Kiley McDaniel.

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López to have surgery; Braves waiting for results

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April 5, 2025

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López to have surgery; Braves waiting for results

  • Associated Press

Apr 4, 2025, 06:07 PM ET

ATLANTA — The Braves hope to learn more about right-hander Reynaldo Lopez‘s ability to return to the rotation when he has exploratory arthroscopic surgery on his inflamed right shoulder on Tuesday in Los Angeles.

The Braves placed López on the 15-day injured list on Monday. He was moved to the 60-day IL on Thursday, so he will miss at least two months.

“We won’t know anything until that procedure,” manager Brian Snitker said before Friday night’s home opener against the Miami Marlins.

The Braves returned home with an 0-7 record, their worst start since an 0-9 start in 2016. They were swept at San Diego and Los Angeles to open the season.

No Major League Baseball team has reached the playoffs after an 0-7 start.

López allowed three runs and nine hits in a loss to San Diego on Friday night. The right-hander was an important part of the rotation in 2024, when he was 8-5 with a 1.99 ERA in his first year with the team.

The Braves recalled right-hander Bryce Elder from Triple-A Gwinnett to take López’s spot on the active roster.

Right-handed reliever Jesse Chavez, who was designated for assignment on Tuesday and refused an outright assignment to the minors, returned to the organization on a minor league contract on Friday. Chavez allowed one run and two hits in his only outing with Atlanta following his recall from Triple-A Gwinnett.

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