So often in recent years, baseballs have been the subject of controversy. How tightly are they wound? What is the height of their seams? What’s inside them that might determine how far they fly? What has been slathered onto them that might impact how slick they are?
In that sense, the sudden furor over so-called torpedo bats is refreshing. At least, for once, we’re arguing and conspiracy-theorizing about a different piece of equipment.
But torpedo bats are simply an iteration in the art of bat-making, a practice that has been evolving since the day some long-gone hominid first swatted at a round stone with a stick they found lying on the ground.
In that spirit, let’s take a moment to consider the turning-point moments in baseball bat history — an abridged guide to how we got from sticks to torpedoes.
Wee Willie, wood wars and the wild west of bat experiments
From the beginning, the partnership between players and their bats have been personal affairs, with everything from length to weight to wood preference coming under scrutiny. While the points of emphasis in the game have changed, the choice of bat has always depended on the size of the hitter, the shape of his swing and the kind of batsman he wants to be.
During the early days of baseball, regulations were few and far between and there was a lot of experimentation with the stick. During the late 1880s and early 1890s, some hitters used a flat-faced bat that was supposed to help with bunting but looked more suitable for hammering nails.
Bats were heavier in those days. The style of knob varied, from a ball-shaped knob, a mushroom knob to a barely-there knob at the end of bat handles that were much thicker than the ones we see now. Future Hall of Famer Nap Lajoie used a bat that had two knobs, which seemed to work fine considering he ended with 3,243 career hits, five batting titles and a modern-era record .426 batting average in 1901.
Like many hitters of his time, Ty Cobb swung a heavy bat (40 ounces until late in his career; bats today weigh between 30 and 33 ounces), and he gripped it with his hands apart to maximize control. That was the dominant theme of the era: The ability to control the bat while slapping at the ball, or bunting, was far more important than bat speed. Perhaps the avatar for that kind of baseball was Wee Willie Keeler, the guy who said, “Keep your eye on the ball and hit ’em where they ain’t.” Keeler, who stood 5-foot-5, slapped the ball around with what was basically an oversized baton.
Keeler’s bats measured 30½ to 31 inches in length (bats are now typically 33 or 34 inches), with varying weights up to 46 ounces. Such a thing would look comical in today’s game. Keeler flourished with his small body and heavy bat, hitting .341 over a long career. Power was simply not the aim for Wee Willie, and only 33 of his 2,932 career hits were homers — an estimated 30 of which were of the inside-the-park variety.
Even after specifications on what was allowed were codified, there remained plenty of experimentation. A famous take on bat shape was that of Heinie Groh, an on-base machine for the Giants and Reds in the early 20th century. His “bottle bat” had a long, thick barrel and thin handle. It looked like something more apt for cricket than baseball. Groh’s teammate, Hall of Famer Edd Roush, used a 48-ounce stick.
There was also a long-standing competition in wood sources, with hickory rivaling ash for supremacy. Cobb used a bat made out of what he claimed was black ash, but was probably just white ash. Perhaps the most famous bat in history was Shoeless Joe Jackson’s “Black Betsy,” a massive 36-inch, 39-ounce stick Jackson used his entire career. It was made out of a hickory tree from South Carolina, his native state.
Hickory has fallen completely out of favor, and, considering the rise in importance of power and bat speed over the decades, it’s not hard to understand why. According to Steven Bratkovich, author of “The Baseball Bat: From Trees to the Major Leagues, 19th Century to Today”, Roger Maris used a 33-ounce ash bat when he broke Babe Ruth’s home run record in 1961. If he had used a hickory bat of the same dimensions, it would have weighed 42 ounces.
The invention of The Louisville Slugger
The origin story of the Hillerich & Bradsby Co., at least the bat-making portion of it, traces back to a seminal spring day in 1884. As with most of baseball’s storied past, details of the story have been questioned — even the Louisville Slugger Museum refers to it as “company legend” — but if it’s not exactly true, it ought to be.
One of the great hitters of the day, Pete Browning, had a frustrating day at the plate during a home game in Louisville and seemed to be especially irked by a bat that had broken. In the stands was 17-year-old Bud Hillerich, son of a local woodworker and an apprentice in the craft. Browning, having heard of Hillerich’s skills, asked the teenager whether he could help. Hillerich could, and the next day Browning rang out three hits with the custom-made bat Hillerich constructed for him out of Northern White Ash.
Browning went on to win two battling titles after that day, adding the nickname “the Louisville Slugger” to his existing moniker “Gladiator.” The ramp-up was a bit slow, but by 1894, the company had trademarked “Louisville Slugger” and the bat business was swinging away.
Three years later, Honus Wagner’s big league career began with the Louisville Colonels. Just after the turn of the century, when he had become one the game’s first true superstars with the Pittsburgh Pirates, he also became what is believed to be the first athlete to endorse athletic gear when he signed on as a pitch man for the Louisville Slugger. His autograph began appearing in the wood of the bat itself — the beginning of that long-common practice.
For 100 years or more, the Louisville Slugger reigned supreme as the bat of choice in the majors. The Slugger remains a popular choice, but in recent years, it has had to make room for batmakers such as Victus and Marucci atop the leaderboard.
The Babe’s thin-handled stick helps change baseball forever
Baseball writer and historian Bill James has often pointed to the continual thinning of the bat handle as a key driver of the game’s shift from an emphasis on bat control to one of bat speed. This evolution began in the early 1920s and, yes, it exploded when Ruth clubbed an unthinkable 54 homers in 1920, turning the dead ball era on its ear.
Ruth swung heavy bats — it’s one of the things for which he’s most well known. They tended to weigh at least 44 ounces and as heavy as 50, though it’s not believed he used the latter much during the regular season. But the handles were thin, allowing him to lash the bat around on the pitchers of his day. There was no one factor that led to the game’s transformation to a power-based sport, but the proliferation of thin handle bats in the wake of the Ruth phenomenon was certainly a contributor.
Incidentally, Ruth modeled the bat shape after that of another Hall of Famer, Rogers Hornsby, who didn’t use as heavy a stick but favored thin handles, recognizing their value in getting the bat head through the zone more quickly than was possible with thicker handles. Through 1920, Hornsby was already a .328 career hitter but had just 36 career homers in 2,903 plate appearances. During the next nine seasons, he hit .384 with 241 homers.
If you had to anoint one player as the Albert Einstein of hitting, it would be Ted Williams. Williams had a theory of everything, as long as it pertained to hitting, and there was no detail too small. Naturally, this included his bats.
The story goes that while Williams was still in the minors, using a fairly standard-for-the-time 35-ounce bat, he borrowed a lighter stick from a teammate named Stan Spence. He used it to club a home run to center field and immediately knew that, for him, the lighter bat was the way to go. Initially, when Williams tried to order a lighter-weight model, Hillerich and Bradsby tried to talk him out of it. But you couldn’t really talk Teddy Ballgame out of anything.
A few years later, around 1948, a young Red Sox fan named David Pressman — who must have been a spiritual descendant of Bud Hillerich — noticed that, one night, after he had left a bat outside overnight in some dew-covered grass, it felt heavier. When he weighed it, sure enough, it had gained about two ounces. Assuming it had absorbed some moisture, he put the bat into a coal oven and — voila! — it was back to normal.
The story was recounted in Ben Bradlee Jr.’s “The Kid.” The excited Pressman managed to get this information to Williams, his favorite player, who invited him to Fenway Park for a chat. Pressman told him what he had found, and Williams listened. They settled on a system of using clothes dryers in the Boston Red Sox clubhouse to heat up and dry out Williams’ bats, and Williams used scales to monitor the weight of his weapons of choice from there on out.
This system of heating up his bats continued during the rest of Williams’ Hall of Fame career, during which he hit .336 with 299 homers — beginning with his age-30 season. Williams and Pressman remained friends and associates for the rest of Teddy Ballgame’s life. But Williams insisted Pressman keep the bat-heating ploy a secret until his passing.
However, Williams did ask Pressman to explain the theory of bat-heating one time to Joe DiMaggio. DiMaggio, according to Pressman, looked unconvinced and simply walked away.
Superballs, pine tar — and an MLB ‘Mission: Impossible’
Cheating has a long, inglorious history in baseball, and when it comes to bats, there have been plenty of shenanigans and intrigue. DiMaggio used a bat named “Betsy Ann” during his 56-game hitting streak in 1941. The bat was stolen in the midst of his spree between games of a doubleheader. Despite his despair over losing Betsy Ann, DiMaggio kept his streak alive. Then she returned, arriving a week later in a plain brown package delivered by a courier. It turned out that the thief, a guy from Newark, had bragged about his prize to the wrong people.
One famous incident was the George Brett pine tar episode from 1983, though despite the rule on the books about the substance, it has never really been explained why having extra pine tar on a bat, while messy, would give a hitter any kind of edge.
Numerous players have been rumored to have used corked bats, which seemed to be most prominent from the 1970s through the early 2000s. The goal was simply to lessen the weight of the bat in the never-ending pursuit of bat speed.
There are all sorts of things you can stuff into a bat. On Sept. 7, 1974, Yankees star Graig Nettles homered against the Tigers. His next time up, Nettles stroked a single but broke his bat in the process. While Nettles ran to first, Detroit catcher Bill Freehan was busy chasing the six Superballs that had come tumbling out of Nettles’ bat.
Nettles explained that the bat had been a gift from a fan and, apparently, the powers-that-be bought his story. Nettles wasn’t suspended.
In another famous incident, a suspension was handed out. During a game at Chicago’s Comiskey Park in 1994, White Sox manager Gene Lamont challenged Albert Belle’s use of a bat, and it was confiscated by the umpiring crew for later investigation.
Meanwhile, the rest of the game played out. Cleveland reliever Jason Grimsley crawled through the ceiling from the visiting clubhouse to the umpire’s room and swapped Belle’s bat out for one belonging to Paul Sorrento, leaving behind chunks of ceiling tile and mangled metal. The umpires were not fooled, andBelle was suspended seven games.
An even longer suspension was doled out to Sammy Sosa in 2003, when his bat shattered during a game and revealed the cork that was within. Sosa claimed he picked up the bat by mistake. He did not get the same benefit of the doubt that Nettles did.
Barry, Barry good wood
Barry Bonds hit 73 home runs in 2001. It’s a record. No, really, you can look it up.
There has been so much clamor about Bonds’ training methods over the years that his place in bat evolution tends to be overlooked. When Bonds set that record, he swung bats made out of maple, not ash.
ESPN wrote about this at the time. Bonds said then, “I tried it and I liked it. Ash wood is a softer wood that has a tendency to split and crack easier. Maple gives you the opportunity that if you feel comfortable with it, you’ve got a chance of keeping it for a while.”
It seemed to work out for him. Bonds wasn’t the first player to use a maple bat, but many others followed his example once his historic numbers attracted unprecedented attention.
A few years later, after the use of maple bats spread, it became a source of concern. While maple bats were harder to break than bats made out of other wood, including ash, when they did come apart, they tended to shatter. This would send dangerous shards of wood flying through the air around the field. People got hurt. Since then, after some MLB-led investigations into maple bats, the manufacturing processes evolved and the rate of broken bats has improved.
In the years since Bonds largely sparked their proliferation, maple bats raced past ash as the wood of choice in the big league. The trend was accelerated by blight — a massive infestation of invasive beetles wreaked havoc on the ash trees that companies such as Hillerich & Bradsby so long relied upon. More than three years ago, The Athletic profiled this sea change in the industry, describing Joey Votto as the last of the ash bat advocates. Votto, of course, has since retired.
Even so, more than 150 years since the advent of major league baseball, the source of wood for bats is not a settled, consensus part of the game. Birch is used in some bat models, and bamboo is often cited as a possible competitor. How long before someone tries to bring back hickory?
The only constant is change.
Synthetic sticks
In 2022, commissioner Rob Manfred announced that baseball would be experimenting with aluminum bats in hopes of introducing them for regular-season use in the middle of that campaign.
Except he didn’t — because that story making the rounds three years ago was an April Fools Day concoction, one that has cropped up around that date a few times. But this hoax underscores why it’s outlandish to even ponder metal bats rising from Little League and college ball up to the majors. Pitchers might have to wear Kevlar on the mound. Still, while aluminum bats aren’t coming to MLB, James wrote about the profound impact the advent of metal bats at other levels of the game has had in the big leagues in “The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract.”
In a nutshell, James wrote that it was once dogma that a hitter couldn’t prosper by crowding the plate and trying to drive outside pitches to the opposite field, the likely outcome being a stream of ground outs to middle infielders. But then aluminum sticks showed up and amateur batters found they were able to drive outside pitches just fine. Soon, advanced hitters learned that the same approach worked once they made the switch to wood.
Now, it’s no longer considered strange to see a hitter trying to drive the ball, in the air, to the opposite field. (See: Aaron Judge.) There’s more to it than the rise of the aluminum bat, but the kind of stick a player uses as a kid impacts what they do when they swing wood bats when they reach the big time.
The bat, er, beat goes on
The appearance of the torpedo bat is noteworthy, but the only thing novel about it is that it took so long for someone to think of it. There have been flat bats and round bats. Thin handles, thick handles, V-handles (a Don Mattingly innovation) and axe handles. Heavy bats, heavier bats and light bats. Short bats and long bats. The bat is always changing, and always has.
Twenty-five years ago, the rise of maple seemed like a revolution. Thirty years before that, it was the sudden appearance of cupped bats, a style in which the end of the bat is hollowed out. The origin story of those is another murky area, but it appears that while you could get cupped bats in America as early as the late 1890s, they first became much more popular in Japan’s professional leagues. In the late 1960s, onetime Cubs outfielder George Altman played in Japan after his career in the majors wound down, then brought some of the cupped bats back with him, where they attracted the attention of outfielder Jose Cardenal. (Or possibly Lou Brock, and Cardenal saw Brock with them.) The use of cupped bats had been sporadic but spread quickly, and the bats are now ubiquitous.
With companies such as Victus offering painted bats and other modes of aesthetic customization, including the popular pencil bats, bats have become as much about personal expression as they are about productivity. This is on full display on Players Weekend, when players and those who supply their bats can let their creativity fly. While these innovations might not have much competitive impact, they add color and flavor to the old game.
Torpedo bats are just the latest entrant on this ongoing continuum. They are the product of a collaboration between data science, bat manufacturers and each individual player. Just as bats have long been made to spec depending on a player’s swing and proclivities, so too is the torpedo bat.
For now, we can’t declare one way or another whether the advent of the torpedo bat is going to change the game, but it probably won’t. As we collect the data, chances are any tangible effect the bat might have will be subsumed by a thousand other factors that produce the game’s statistics. Perhaps we wouldn’t even be discussing this if Yankees announcer Michael Kay had not pointed out that New York was using these newfangled bats during a historic game in which the team ultimately went deep nine times against the Milwaukee Brewers.
Torpedo bats won’t work for everyone, but for some they will. Will they change the game? Whether they’re here to stay or another passing fad, they’re part of a sport that is constantly evolving — and will continue to do so.
Some of the most dynamic home run hitters in baseball will be taking aim at the Truist Park stands on Monday (8 p.m. ET on ESPN) in one of the most anticipated events of the summer.
While the prospect of a back-to-back champion is out of the picture — 2024 winner Teoscar Hernandez is not a part of this year’s field — a number of exciting stars will be taking the field, including Atlanta’s own Matt Olson, who replacedRonald Acuna Jr. just three days before the event. Will Olson make a run in front of his home crowd? Will Cal Raleigh show off the power that led to 38 home runs in the first half? Or will one of the younger participants take the title?
We have your one-stop shop for everything Derby related, from predictions to live updates once we get underway to analysis and takeaways at the night’s end.
Who is going to win the Derby and who will be the runner-up?
Jeff Passan: Raleigh. His swing is perfect for the Derby: He leads MLB this season in both pull percentage and fly ball percentage, so it’s not as if he needs to recalibrate it to succeed. He has also become a prolific hitter from the right side this season — 16 home runs in 102 at-bats — and his ability to switch between right- and left-handed pitching offers a potential advantage. No switch-hitter (or catcher for that matter) has won a Home Run Derby. The Big Dumper is primed to be the first, beating Buxton in the finals.
Alden Gonzalez: Cruz. He might be wildly inconsistent at this point in his career, but he is perfect for the Derby — young enough to possess the stamina required for a taxing event that could become exhausting in the Atlanta heat; left-handed, in a ballpark where the ball carries out better to right field; and, most importantly, capable of hitting balls at incomprehensible velocities. Raleigh will put on a good show from both sides of the plate but will come in second.
Buster Olney: Olson. He is effectively pinch-hitting for Acuna, and because he received word in the past 72 hours of his participation, he hasn’t had the practice rounds that the other competitors have been going through. But he’s the only person in this group who has done the Derby before, which means he has experienced the accelerated pace, adrenaline and push of the crowd.
His pitcher, Eddie Perez, knows something about performing in a full stadium in Atlanta. And, as Olson acknowledged in a conversation Sunday, the park generally favors left-handed hitters because of the larger distances that right-handed hitters must cover in left field.
Jesse Rogers: Olson. Home-field advantage will mean something this year as hitting in 90-plus degree heat and humidity will be an extra challenge in Atlanta. Olson understands that and can pace himself accordingly. Plus, he was a late addition. He has got nothing to lose. He’ll outlast the young bucks in the field. And I’m not putting Raleigh any lower than second — his first half screams that he’ll be in the finals against Olson.
Jorge Castillo: Wood. His mammoth power isn’t disputed — he can jack baseballs to all fields. But the slight defect in his power package is that he doesn’t hit the ball in the air nearly as often as a typical slugger. Wood ranks 126th out of 155 qualified hitters across the majors in fly ball percentage. And he still has swatted 24 home runs this season. So, in an event where he’s going to do everything he can to lift baseballs, hitting fly balls won’t be an issue, and Wood is going to show off that gigantic power en route to a victory over Cruz in the finals.
Who will hit the longest home run of the night — and how far?
Passan: Cruz hits the ball harder than anyone in baseball history. He’s the choice here, at 493 feet.
Gonzalez: If you exclude the Coors Field version, there have been just six Statcast-era Derby home runs that have traveled 497-plus feet. They were compiled by two men: Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton. James Wood — all 6-foot-7, 234 pounds of him — will become the third.
Olney: James Wood has the easy Stanton- and Judge-type power, and he will clear the Chophouse with the longest homer. Let’s say 497 feet.
Rogers: Hopefully he doesn’t injure himself doing it, but Buxton will break out his massive strength and crush a ball at least 505 feet. I don’t see him advancing far in the event, but for one swing, he’ll own the night.
Castillo: Cruz hits baseballs hard and far. He’ll crush a few bombs, and one will reach an even 500 feet.
Who is the one slugger fans will know much better after the Derby?
Passan: Buxton capped his first half with a cycle on Saturday, and he’ll carry that into the Derby, where he will remind the world why he was baseball’s No. 1 prospect in 2015. Buxton’s talent has never been in question, just his health. And with his body feeling right, he has the opportunity to put on a show fans won’t soon forget.
Olney: Caminero isn’t a big name and wasn’t a high-end prospect like Wood was earlier in his career. Just 3½ years ago, Caminero was dealt to the Rays by the Cleveland Guardians in a relatively minor November trade for pitcher Tobias Myers. But since then, he has refined his ability to cover inside pitches and is blossoming this year into a player with ridiculous power. He won’t win the Derby, but he’ll open some eyes.
What’s the one moment we’ll all be talking about long after this Derby ends?
Gonzalez: The incredible distances and velocities that will be reached, particularly by Wood, Cruz, Caminero, Raleigh and Buxton. The hot, humid weather at Truist Park will only aid the mind-blowing power that will be on display Monday night.
Rogers: The exhaustion on the hitter’s faces, swinging for home run after home run in the heat and humidity of Hot-lanta!
Castillo: Cruz’s 500-foot blast and a bunch of other lasers he hits in the first two rounds before running out of gas in the finals.
Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg has agreed in principle to a $1.7 billion deal to sell the franchise to a group led by a Florida-based developer Patrick Zalupski, according to a report from The Athletic.
The deal is reportedly expected to be closed as early as September and will keep the franchise in the area, with Zalupski, a homebuilder in Jacksonville, having a strong preference to land in Tampa rather than St. Petersburg.
Sternberg bought the Rays in 2004 for $200 million.
According to Zalupski’s online bio, he is the founder, president and CEO of Dream Finders Homes. The company was founded in December 2008 and closed on 27 homes in Jacksonville the following year. Now, with an expanded footprint to many parts of the United States, Dream Finders has closed on more than 31,100 homes since its founding.
He also is a member of the board of trustees at the University of Florida.
The new ownership group also reportedly includes Bill Cosgrove, the CEO of Union Home Mortgage, and Ken Babby, owner of the Akron RubberDucks and Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, both minor-league teams.
A year ago, Sternberg had a deal in place to build a new stadium in the Historic Gas Plant District, a reimagined recreational, retail and residential district in St. Petersburg to replace Tropicana Field.
However, after Hurricane Milton shredded the roof of the stadium last October, forcing the Rays into temporary quarters, Sternberg changed his tune, saying the team would have to bear excess costs that were not in the budget.
“After careful deliberation, we have concluded we cannot move forward with the new ballpark and development project at this moment,” Sternberg said in a statement in March. “A series of events beginning in October that no one could have anticipated led to this difficult decision.”
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred and some other owners began in March to privately push Sternberg to sell the franchise, The Athletic reported.
It is unclear what Zalupski’s group, if it ultimately goes through with the purchase and is approved by MLB owners, will do for a permanent stadium.
The Rays are playing at George M. Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, located at the site of the New York Yankees‘ spring training facility and home of their Single-A Tampa Tarpons.
ATLANTA — Shohei Ohtani will bat leadoff as the designated hitter for the National League in Tuesday night’s All-Star Game at Truist Park, and the Los Angeles Dodgers star will be followed in the batting order by left fielder Ronald Acuna Jr. of the host Atlanta Braves.
Pittsburgh Pirates right-hander Paul Skenes will start his second straight All-Star Game, Major League Baseball announced last week. Detroit Tigers left-hander Tarik Skubal will make his first All-Star start for the American League.
“I think when you’re talking about the game, where it’s at, these two guys … are guys that you can root for, are super talented, are going to be faces of this game for years to come,” Roberts said.
Ohtani led off for the AL in the 2021 All-Star Game, when the two-way sensation also was the AL’s starting pitcher. He hit leadoff in 2022, then was the No. 2 hitter for the AL in 2023 and for the NL last year after leaving the Los Angeles Angels for the Dodgers.
Skenes and Skubal are Nos. 1-2 in average four-seam fastball velocity among those with 1,500 or more pitches this season, Skenes at 98.2 mph and Skubal at 97.6 mph, according to MLB Statcast.
A 23-year-old right-hander, Skenes is 4-8 despite a major league-best 2.01 ERA for the Pirates, who are last in the NL Central. The 2024 NL Rookie of the Year has 131 strikeouts and 30 walks in 131 innings.
Skubal, a 28-year-old left-hander, is the reigning AL Cy Young Award winner. He is 10-3 with a 2.23 ERA, striking out 153 and walking 16 in 121 innings.