A FaceTime call came in last Monday morning to Freddie Vargas, CEO of Tater Baseball.

On the other end: New York Mets outfielder Starling Marte. Like everyone around baseball, Marte had seen the New York Yankees score 36 runs and bash 15 home runs in a three-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers, with five of the Yankees’ regulars using bats shaped like bowling pins that immediately caught the attention of fans, announcers and other players.

Marte, who has used Tater bats since 2018, was one of many MLB players who inquired about the bat — now known as a torpedo bat — as the craze took baseball by storm. He wanted to place an order with Tater for some new torpedo bats to use (at least initially) in batting practice.

“Well, they’re trending right now,” Marte said this weekend. “Let’s see what happens when I use it. I have to give it a try.”

Freddie and his younger brother Jeremiah, who started Tater Baseball in 2015 along with their father, Fred Sr., had Marte text them a data plot of his contact points on his barrel. They design the specifications for a new torpedo bat that would best suit Marte — a process similar to creating a traditional bat. By the end of the day, four new bats were ready to be shipped to Citi Field, awaiting Marte when the Mets returned home from their series in Miami.

Torpedo-shaped bats are not new for Tater Baseball, a small family business operating out of an industrial park in Cheshire, Connecticut. The brothers played baseball growing up and eventually both played in college, but Jeremiah was still a senior in high school when the family had the idea to develop a training bat. Freddie became CEO/Founder with Jeremiah as Co-Founder and COO.

Training bats are usually a little lighter, helping a player develop bat speed while focusing on the sweet spot of the barrel, and can be used for tee work, soft toss or batting practice. Fred Sr. had an engineering background — he still works for a plastics molding company, helping at Tater mostly on weekends — but none had woodworking experience. They ventured into business anyway.

“I told them, ‘We’re not going to do it half-ass,'” Fred Sr. said. “What’s going to differentiate us?”

They started with four models, making premium bats by hand in a shed in their backyard and focusing on the training bats. One of their early models in 2015 was a torpedo-shaped game bat — but it was for softball, not baseball. Three months later, they purchased their first CNC lathe, a sophisticated machine that uses computer-controlled automation to create the desired shape of the bat (the company is now on its second one).

Operations soon moved to the garage and eventually the shop in Cheshire — and Tater is up to 800 or 900 models. The front is a retail store, selling not just the various training bats and game models for baseball and softball, but other equipment with the Tater logo — batting gloves, sliding mitts, fielding gloves, apparel and foam balls also used for training.

Jeremiah laid out a bunch of bats on a table. He pointed to one.

“We make what we call an underload trainer that is shaped like a torpedo. It’s really for sweet-spot training, but also to train underload for bat speed,” he said. “It mimics the torpedo shape, so we enlarge the sweet spot here, taper it off at the end so players have a visual representation of where to hit the ball. Players wanted a sweet spot where they typically impact it, and that’s what we kind of came up with.”

Tater made its first underload trainer in 2018 and started shifting to the torpedo style around 2021 — and it has become the company staple since it was introduced. Jeremiah said 22 of the 30 major league teams use their training bats at the major league level and several others use them across their minor league organizations, with the company working with players or minor league hitting coordinators and major league hitting coaches.

The world of major league game bats is a competitive field to break into — Freddie referred to it as “cutthroat.” MLB must approve any bat-making company and though 41 companies have been approved, Marucci and Victus dominate the market with an estimated 60% of the bats used in the majors — and Marucci owns Victus. Only a handful of companies sell even more than a few dozen bats to major leaguers, according to Freddie. Tater broke into the majors in 2018.

Jeremiah estimated that Tater ranked about seventh or eighth last season, with Marte and Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Teoscar Hernandez their most prominent players. Others using Tater bats include Chicago White Sox infielder Brooks Baldwin, plus Travis Bazzana, the top pick in the 2024 MLB draft, and Nick Kurtz, the Athletics’ first-round pick last summer. Freddie said about 150 professional players are using Tater game bats at least part of the time.

Marte holds a special place for the Vargas family, however. He was their first major league client, coming to Tater via a stroke of good fortune. A family friend named Ruben Sosa, who used Tater bats, was a teammate of Marte’s in the Dominican Winter League in December 2017. Jeremiah tells the story: “Marte was in a little bit of a slump, picked up Sosa’s bat, got a couple hits, and then here we are.” Marte has been using Tater bats ever since.

Gregory Polanco, Yan Gomes and Carlos Correa joined Marte as early clients.

“Really, it was just bootstrapped word of mouth and making a good product and providing a good service,” Jeremiah said. “We like to say we have a relentless pursuit on making the best bat in the game.”

The brothers are friendly and clearly love talking baseball and baseball bats — everything from grain deviation and max barrel diameter to discussing what kind of bat to use in specific situations.

“I love seeing the evolution of baseball bats,” Jeremiah said. “It’s great to see it being used in games and see the transition to help hitters be a little more competitive at the plate or give them a little bit more of an edge.”

The process of making a torpedo bat is no different from a regular bat.

After Marte sent in his contact data, an analysis was made on a shape best suited for him. This is the most time-consuming part of the process. The overlay of Marte’s traditional bat compared with his new torpedo bat showed the traditional bat had a sweet spot 22.4 inches from the knob, while the torpedo bat had a sweet spot 21.8 inches from it.

“A small difference, but a big difference,” Fred Sr. said.

With the sweet spot closer to the hitter’s hands, the bat will have less flex — which means it will lead to a little better contact on balls hit closer to the hands. This was the reason some of the Yankees players, like Anthony Volpe, made the change to the torpedo shape, with data showing his sweet spot was closer to his hands.

“We recommend players to use a little bit of a heavier game bat weight for their torpedo compared to the regular bat,” Jeremiah said. “The reason being, when you do fatten out the barrel slightly at the sweet spot, it changes the density a little bit. The easiest way to describe it is more density, more pop; less density, less pop.”

Marte typically uses a 33.5-inch, 30.5-ounce bat. After a conversion to lock in the specifics, it was decided that his torpedo bat would be an ounce heavier at 31.5 ounces and the process of physically making the bat began.

The wood — birch or maple — is sourced from Canada, where the colder weather makes the wood fibers harder. And, yes, the new tariffs will increase costs.

“Tariff-based wood is a tricky game right now that we’re navigating,” Jeremiah said, adding that they’re seeing a 25% increase in raw material costs, not including freight costs to ship it across the border.

The wood is delivered in precut, rectangular slabs that are about the length of a bat. Each slab is weighed and marked (the more dense, the more performance on impact). Then, it goes to the lathe. You might envision a craftsman with decades of experience at work, but Kyle Green, who works the machine, is 20 years old and has been working at Tater since he was 16.

After the bat is cut on the lathe, it is hand-sanded, which takes about two minutes, and then cupped, the end hollowed out (a maximum of an inch and a quarter). The process takes about six minutes — on a busy day, Tater might make around 150 bats. Finally, the bats are painted with a special lacquer. There are rules here as well, Jeremiah explained, as MLB approves only certain colors for game bats.

Players, of course, love to show off a little swag whenever they can, so Tater has designed unique colors to use in batting practice. They created a glacier-colored bat for Marte and also made a special design for Hernandez to use in last year’s Home Run Derby.

Hernandez’s nickname is “Mr. Seeds,” so they replicated the David sunflower seeds logo, but replaced David with Tater, and instead of saying America’s favorite seed brand, it said Teoscar’s favorite seed brand. Because the Tater name appeared twice on the bat, however, an MLB official prevented Hernandez from using it.

When Hernandez used the bat in the All-Star Game, Freddie said MLB fined the company “a couple hundred dollars.”

For now, the Tater Baseball crew will continue to work 12- and 13-hour days, as Freddie and Jeremiah field calls about torpedo bats and churn them out for all their clients, just like they did for Marte.

“My gut tells me that there will be a place for torpedo bats and there will still be a place for regular game bats,” Jeremiah said. “But I think there’s going to be a significant uptick in the guys using the torpedo bats.”