Connect with us

Published

4 years ago

on

7:32 AM ET

On the 10th anniversary of Nebraska‘s entrance into the Big Ten, interim athletic director Garrett Klassy officially began his term overseeing the Huskers’ program.

The irony isn’t lost on those who have lived through a jagged first decade in the conference.

Athletic director Bill Moos’ abrupt retirement last month isn’t the most surprising nor the most damaging thing Nebraska has absorbed since its celebrated Big Ten arrival on July 1, 2011. But Moos’ exit epitomizes the turbulence for a football program on its third coach, Scott Frost, and that is welcoming its fourth athletic director, Trev Alberts, since 2012. Alberts, a former All-America linebacker at Nebraska, officially begins his term Monday. But leadership instability has hurt Nebraska in a league, and especially a division, defined by long coaching and administrative tenures.

Other factors have contributed to the Huskers’ subpar results. The recruiting adjustment has been rocky at times. The Big Ten also is stronger than when Nebraska arrived, both financially and on the field.

Still, few expected Nebraska to complete its first Big Ten decade at 68-55, 43-41 in conference play. Since 2011, Nebraska ranks 54th nationally in win percentage (.553) and eighth among Big Ten teams. The Huskers have yet to win a league title (their last was in 1999). Their lone division championship came back in 2012, which preceded a 70-31 loss in the Big Ten championship game against Wisconsin, a team only in the game because both Ohio State and Penn State were ineligible.

The extended stretch of mediocrity is jarring for a Nebraska program that won five national titles between 1970 and 1997. From 1963 to 2001, the Huskers captured 22 conference championships (outright or shared) and logged 28 AP top-10 finishes and 22 seasons with 10 or more wins. During the span, Nebraska had only 11 seasons with three or more losses, none with more than four and none with more than three between 1969 and 2001.

The Huskers now have lost five or more games in five of the past six seasons.

“Nebraska is struggling to find its foothold from a leadership standpoint, a style standpoint, a recruiting standpoint,” said Damon Benning, a former Huskers I-back who played on national title teams in 1994 and 1995, and now hosts a daily sports talk radio show in Omaha. “Meanwhile, the conference just keeps getting better and better.

“A double whammy.”

The question is how much of Nebraska’s struggles can be attributed to joining the Big Ten, and how much can be tied to internal reasons. To find out, ESPN spoke to people in and around Nebraska’s program since the Big Ten arrival. Some were granted anonymity to speak freely about what they observed. Attempts to interview Frost and Moos were unsuccessful.

Those who spoke describe a program still searching for its identity in an improving conference. Nebraska is rightfully proud of its championship tradition but also somewhat hamstrung by the past, especially as the program navigates recruiting realities and other areas where it no longer holds clear advantages.

The Big Ten has provided the stability Nebraska needed, and the affiliation is still celebrated in academic circles. But others cling to Big Eight nostalgia and haven’t embraced Nebraska’s position in its newest league.

“You’ve got to have a plan, and the plan can’t be: ‘We’re going to win a national championship, we’re going to get back to national contention,” a source said. “The plan has to be: ‘Now that we are in the Big Ten, what are the challenges?’ I’m not saying temper expectations, but you have to get to: What are we all about, and how are we going to get there?”

Nebraska’s arrival in the Big Ten was greeted with excitement and exhales.

The Huskers needed a permanent home. The Big 12 had nearly been pillaged by the Pac-12, and teams such as Missouri and Colorado were looking to leave. Plus, the league had become increasingly Texas-centric.

“There was concern at the time as to whether the Big 12 would survive,” said Harvey Perlman, Nebraska’s chancellor from 2001 to 2016. “I wouldn’t call it desperation, but there was certainly some uneasiness about where Nebraska was going to find itself athletically. Finding a stable home in the Big Ten was certainly a relief.”

Nebraska’s academic community celebrated the move. The Big Ten’s Committee on Institutional Cooperation, an academic consortium between top research institutions, provided “a boost to our reputation,” Perlman said.

“On the academic side, it’s been great; there’s a lot of research and collaboration,” said Jo Potuto, a constitutional law professor at Nebraska and the faculty athletics representative since 1997. “On the athletic side, for everybody it has been a surprise Nebraska has not been more competitive, certainly not in football.”

The football struggles haven’t translated to other programs. Nebraska’s powerhouse volleyball team won national titles in 2015 and 2017, and owns three Big Ten titles. The baseball team has made five NCAA tournament appearances since 2014 and this spring won its second conference title.

Before the Big Ten move, Potuto attended a meeting athletic director Tom Osborne held with the school’s head coaches. Osborne, the Hall of Fame Huskers coach from 1973 to 1997, wanted the coaches’ input. Some mentioned recruiting and how it would change in a Midwest-based league. Ideally, they would have liked longer to prepare for the move. But none stated direct opposition, Potuto said.

Nebraska football entered the Big Ten following consecutive appearances in the Big 12 championship, losing second-half leads both times. The Huskers were 29-12 (17-7 Big 12) with two AP top-20 finishes under coach Bo Pelini. They didn’t dominate recruiting but had signed ESPN’s No. 17 class in 2011, and they did well in key talent areas such as Texas and California.

“We were pretty well into the Top 25 and went to a bowl game every year,” Osborne said. “We weren’t where we were in the ’90s, but we were in pretty good shape at that time.”

As a new Big Ten member, Nebraska received a smaller revenue share — $10 million-$11 million less than others for the first three years. This angered some key people around the university, sources said. But money never has been a major impediment at Nebraska. The football team, meanwhile, went 9-4 in its Big Ten debut season, finishing third in the Legends division and No. 24 in the AP poll.

Nebraska won the division the next year, and continued to compete. The Huskers had good to decent records against Penn State (3-0), Iowa (3-1), Michigan (2-1), Michigan State (2-2) and Ohio State (1-1) during their first four years in the Big Ten. They struggled with Wisconsin, going 1-3, including the drubbing in Indianapolis, but went 37-16 overall (22-10 Big Ten) with three top-25 finishes.

Was Nebraska a national contender? No. The team got blown out too often, and Pelini’s fiery nature got him in trouble, ultimately leading to his firing after the 2014 regular season. But these days, the Huskers likely would take those records in a heartbeat.

Why has Nebraska backslid so much since 2014, despite being in a division without any teams that match its championship tradition? The answer starts with recruiting.

Nebraska entered the Big Ten with some recruiting momentum, but Pelini had built his team for the Big 12, largely with players from the Big 12 footprint. The Huskers’ designed their two-gap defense to stop the spread offenses of the Big 12, not the bigger, power-based units of the Big Ten. Nebraska no longer was a national recruiting heavyweight, but the program still knew where to go to find the players it needed.

The Big Ten move has thrown Nebraska’s recruiting “out of whack,” a former assistant said. Nebraska has tried to pivot toward recruiting the Midwest and East Coast, but hasn’t achieved significant traction.

“There’s a little bit of a void in terms of a recruiting home,” he added. “Where are you located?”

When Mike Riley arrived at Nebraska from Oregon State to replace Pelini, he spent time studying “how to recruit for Nebraska in the world of the new conference.” Riley and his staff focused on a 500-mile radius from Lincoln, which included Big Ten hub markets such as Chicago and Minneapolis, but also Kansas City and Denver.

They also prioritized Texas, which Riley had recruited for years while at Oregon State.

“That part of it wasn’t the same because you didn’t have those yearly games down in Texas, where you could sell that to the parents,” Riley said. “The players are so great and there had been a history. But it’s hard to keep that history going when you don’t have that old connection.”

Coaches say Nebraska’s location, its conference and an accelerated recruiting cycle all have magnified obstacles. Nebraska isn’t the easiest campus to access, and most recruits make their college choices before taking official visits.

“They play in the Big Ten at [11 a.m. Central time]. If [a recruit] played on Friday night, how does he get there for kickoff?” a former assistant said. “You’re not flying into Lincoln directly. When you’re in the Big 12, you can recruit Texas and Oklahoma and get kids to come.”

The coach added that recruits based in areas with other Power 5 schools must elect to “fly over everybody” to reach Nebraska. There are recruiting challenges within the Big Ten, too, being located in the least populated of the league’s 11 states.

“You’re not going to out-recruit Ohio State, Penn State, Michigan,” another former assistant said. “You’re not going to out-recruit Michigan State. Minnesota has access to more kids faster because they have a national hub airport. Wisconsin is closer to more population bases.”

Riley, who went 9-4 in 2016, thought his recruiting strategy would pay off with Nebraska’s 2018 class, which initially included commitments from four-star prospects such as wide receiver Joshua Moore and cornerbacks Brendan Radley-Hiles, Mario Goodrich and Chase Williams. All four would decommit — they signed with Texas, Oklahoma, Clemson and USC, respectively — as Nebraska in 2017 endured its worst season (4-8) since 1961, leading to the ousting of athletic director Shawn Eichorst and then Riley.

New hope arrived with Frost, a native Nebraskan and a quarterback for Osborne’s final national championship team in 1997. Frost engineered a historic turnaround at UCF, which went 13-0 with a Peach Bowl victory in 2017, two years after going winless. He also had cut his teeth as an Oregon assistant under Chip Kelly. After spurning Florida to come home to Nebraska, Frost was widely seen as a potential program savior.

Many believed Frost could bridge what worked in the past with what Nebraska needs now, even though he hadn’t recruited the Big Ten region.

Frost has generated some recruiting wins. Nebraska signed ESPN top-25 classes in 2019 and 2020. But the Huskers have logged four consecutive losing seasons and three under Frost (12-20 overall), which seemed to impact the most recent class (39th nationally).

“What draws a kid there?” a former assistant said. “When’s the last time they won a conference championship? No kid in high school has any idea that they ever won.”

Before his time on local Nebraska sports radio, Benning played for Nebraska during the end of the Osborne glory era. He also has closely observed the program’s path ever since.

His conclusion: What Nebraska became from the early 1960s through the 1990s, capitalizing on two Hall of Fame coaches — Osborne and Bob Devaney — and some structural advantages to become a national force, was not sustainable.

“More of a geographic anomaly than built for the long haul as a blue blood,” Benning said. “Nebraska’s got a great fan base, they print money, they’ve got great facilities. They’ve got to evolve with the times. It’s been really hard for me to reconcile that in my head — what they once were versus what they’re capable of being. There’s a real fine line between understanding history and embracing it but not being held captive.

“Nebraska’s still held captive by the success they’ve had. They need to be comfortable in their own skin. They have to have peace with it.”

Nebraska undoubtedly can perform much better in the Big Ten. But part of the path toward future success is acknowledging realistic goals and adjusting to achieve them.

“At a place like Nebraska, you’re not going to beat Ohio State every year,” one source said. “You don’t have the same recruiting base. Iowa’s more of a model at Nebraska than Ohio State is, with where you’re located and where you’re recruiting. You’ve got to be realistic. At some point, you’ve got to not be delusional.”

The philosophical shift remains difficult for some, especially after decades of competing nationally.

“A state of 1.8 million people, where they’re located, and you look at just the West [Division]. Where do you fit with Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Northwestern or Purdue?” one person said. “They didn’t want to judge themselves against that group. They wanted to judge themselves against Michigan, Ohio State, Penn State. The sky’s falling when you lose to Purdue.

“They have to get self-awareness as to who they are, where they fit.”

Osborne thinks Nebraska still can be distinctive, despite its new reality.

“We don’t have to be a copycat program,” he said. “If you continue to do what everybody else is doing, what the leaders in the league like Ohio State are doing, and you don’t have the same talent level, then it’s not going to work out well.”

The process unquestionably requires more continuity. Between 1962 and 1997, Nebraska had two football coaches and did not have a losing season, winning nine or more games in all but two seasons (1967 and 1968). Since 2002, Nebraska has had five (plus two interim). Pelini and Frank Solich were fired with a combined record of 125-46.

Between 1962 and 2002, the school had three athletic directors. Since 2003, Nebraska has had five (plus three interim).

“That’s not a reputation for stability,” Potuto said. “I’m pretty sure if I was a coach, it wouldn’t be a situation that gives me confidence in what I was doing. I don’t know that moving to the Big Ten Conference triggered any of that. I still think the conference was absolutely the right move.”

Nebraska’s frequent leadership changes stand out in a division where continuity is king. Iowa’s Kirk Ferentz is the longest-tenured coach in the FBS (1999), while Northwestern’s Pat Fitzgerald ranks seventh (2006). Iowa has had the same athletic director (Gary Barta) since 2006. Wisconsin just made its first athletic director hire since 2004, and Northwestern made its first since 2008.

“The West has the poster programs for stability,” said Big Ten Network analyst Gerry DiNardo, the former coach at Indiana, LSU and Vanderbilt. “Iowa, Wisconsin and Northwestern: What other three teams in any division of college football have that kind of stability? The SEC certainly doesn’t. I don’t think the Pac-12 does.”

DiNardo added of Nebraska: “Their identity right now is lack of stability.”

Nebraska’s fluctuation has coincided with improvement around the West Division. Big Ten television revenue has helped every school make facilities upgrades and invest in coaches and staff.

Since 2011, Wisconsin has logged six 10-win seasons and five AP top-13 finishes, while Iowa has posted four AP top-25 finishes in the past six years. Northwestern is enjoying its best post-World War II stretch (three 10-win seasons, two division titles, five AP top-25 finishes). Minnesota recently has posted two of its three highest wins totals — 11 in 2019, nine in 2016 — since 1905.

“That Western part, early on, before we got there, wasn’t really that strong of a division,” Riley said. “Now you look at that division, all those guys are great coaches. Every program has improved. The football gained a top-to-bottom competitiveness.

“It’s not easy to step in [at Nebraska] and say, ‘Let’s win like we did in the old Big Eight.’ It’s quite a chore.”

Nebraska’s Big Ten move affected recruiting and other areas of the program, but how much of the team’s performance is because it changed conferences?

“It’s been a bad thing,” a former assistant said.

Others don’t think the Big Ten factored nearly as much in the program’s downturn.

“Our football program was transitioning before we went to the Big Ten,” Perlman said. “We came off of an extraordinary period of time with an extraordinary head coach, and an environment that was amenable to Nebraska building a great program. We underestimate what a great coach Tom Osborne was. Also, the world has changed. Nebraska’s a small state. We’ve only got 1.8 million people, and with the change in eligibility, the change in number of scholarships, the other things that have impacted our program, I think it’s taken time to adjust.

“That would have happened regardless of what conference we were in.”

Another person described the Big Ten as “the least of their problems,” stressing a need for self-assessment and tackling present-day hurdles, rather than living in the past.

“Their struggles in the Big Ten are exacerbated by the strength of the Big Ten,” a former Big Ten athletic director said. “I think Nebraska could have continued to do a little bit better in the Big 12, but I don’t know if they would have done appreciably better.”

As Nebraska begins its second decade in the Big Ten, those familiar with the first say a refined plan is needed. Before Alberts’ hiring, Benning said the athletic director vacancy represents the school’s most important hire in 15 years, noting that Nebraska “needs to find stability in the message.” Benning and others say Nebraska must stop throwing money at its problems and instead outline a clear philosophy and commit to it.

“It has to be earned,” Alberts said at his introduction last week. “We’ll go to work. We’ve got great people. We can do this. But it isn’t going to be overnight, and it isn’t going to be easy, but we’re really going to focus on the fundamentals and mechanics of how we operate. Attention to detail. Work habits.”

Part of the shift could involve fully embracing Big Ten culture. Nebraska historically hasn’t been a program to bite its tongue, whether about Texas’ increasing influence in the Big 12 or the Big Ten’s initial decision to cancel the fall football season in 2020. Although Ohio State and other programs also voiced displeasure with the Big Ten last summer, Nebraska’s approach drew the most attention (and criticism). Frost floated playing as an independent before the Big Ten officially canceled, and Nebraska’s leadership then issued a joint statement expressing disappointment with the league’s decision. Eight parents of Nebraska players sued the Big Ten over the decision to cancel. When the Big Ten revived the fall season, Moos expressed frustration about a schedule front-loaded with Ohio State, Penn State and Wisconsin.

Longtime Omaha World-Herald columnist Tom Shatel calls this Nebraska’s “independent spirit,” borne from years in the Big Eight and Big 12. But the Big Ten historically has settled disputes internally and projected unity. A Big Ten coach said of Nebraska, “It’s almost like them against the world, everybody’s out to screw ’em.”

Frost, speaking last month during Nebraska’s Big Red Caravan event, said that while his views haven’t changed, he might not have been so bold in expressing them, saying, “It put the crosshairs on us.”

“You can tell the relationship is strained,” Benning said. “I don’t feel like Nebraska has a really firm seat at the table. It’s twofold: Nebraska has to do a better job of keeping in-house business in-house. When they have these conversations with the conference, they have to find the happy medium between personalizing what’s best for a university and not alienating the conference. It’s been quite the juggling act.”

Nebraska has plenty of work ahead, but a Big Ten breakthrough remains possible. DiNardo, who faced Nebraska in the Big Eight as a Colorado assistant, knows the program’s potential when properly aligned.

“It’s a big jump to go from Big Eight to Big 12 to Big Ten,” he said. “None of those historic, successful programs have gone through what Nebraska’s gone through. But at the end of the day, the right coach and right administration puts them in position to win the Big Ten, which gives them a chance to win nationally.”

Osborne, who helped recruit Frost back to Nebraska, attended several spring practices and likes what he sees: an experienced quarterback (Adrian Martinez), capable wide receivers and an ascending defense. He thinks areas that defined Nebraska’s dynasty, such as the walk-on program, will start paying off more.

“There’s always an ebb and a flow with programs, and we’ve gone through a difficult stretch, but the basics are pretty good,” he said. “We hope we can be long-term Big Ten, and we can be competitive. I don’t have a crystal ball. I can’t predict what’s going to happen five, 10 years from now, but I have a little bit of an idea of what’s going to happen this fall, and I think we’ll be improved.”

Related Topics:
Continue Reading

Sports

Hunter marks quiet day at Colorado Showcase

Published

3 hours ago

on

April 4, 2025

By

Hunter marks quiet day at Colorado Showcase

  • Jeff LegwoldApr 4, 2025, 12:41 PM ET

    Close

      Jeff Legwold covers the Denver Broncos at ESPN. He has covered the Broncos for more than 20 years and also assists with NFL draft coverage, joining ESPN in 2013. He has been a member of the Pro Football Hall of Fame Board of Selectors since 1999, too. Jeff previously covered the Pittsburgh Steelers, Buffalo Bills and Houston Oilers/Tennessee Titans at previous stops prior to ESPN.

BOULDER, Colo. — A horde of NFL talent evaluators headed for the mountains Friday for the Colorado Showcase, where Heisman Trophy winner Travis Hunter was one of the big draws.

However, it was going to be a limited look at best as Hunter was not seen when players’ heights and weights were taken or for the jumps and 40-yard dash.

Hunter, who is expected to be a top-five selection in this year’s draft and is the No. 1 player on Mel Kiper Jr.’s Big Board, was initially not expected to participate in any on-field work, but Friday morning some scouts in attendance said they expected the two-way star to run routes as a receiver for quarterback Shedeur Sanders‘ throwing session.

Hunter did not work out at the scouting combine or Big 12 pro day but did meet with teams in Indianapolis. Sanders, one of the top quarterbacks on the board and Kiper’s No. 5 player overall, also did not work out at the combine.

Sanders’ brother, Colorado safety Shilo Sanders, measured in at 5-foot-11⅞, 196 pounds, but he did not participate in the jumps or bench press that opened the workout, citing a right shoulder injury.

The highly attended event — by scouts, coaches and personnel executives as well as fans packing small bleachers — had a festive atmosphere. Colorado coach Deion Sanders named it the “We Ain’t Hard 2 Find Showcase,” completed with a large lighted “showcase” sign next to the drills.

Hunter, who has said he wants to play offense and defense in the NFL, won the Chuck Bednarik (top defensive player) and Biletnikoff (top receiver) awards, in addition to the Heisman. He said whether he would primarily be a wide receiver or cornerback in the NFL “depended on the team that picks me.”

He had 96 catches for 1,258 yards and 15 touchdowns as a receiver last season to go with 35 tackles, 11 pass breakups and four interceptions at cornerback. In the Buffaloes’ regular-season finale against Oklahoma State, he became the only FBS player in the past 25 years with three scrimmage touchdowns on offense and an interception in the same game, according to ESPN Research.

Hunter played 1,380 total snaps in Colorado’s 12 regular-season games: 670 on offense, 686 on defense and 24 on special teams. He played 1,007 total snaps in 2023.

With all NFL eyes on the Colorado campus to see Sanders throw, one player who made the most of it was wide receiver Will Sheppard, who was not invited to the combine. Sheppard, who measured in at 6-2¼, 196 pounds, ran his 40s in 4.56 and 4.54 to go with a 40½-inch vertical jump and a 10-foot-11 in the broad jump.

Continue Reading

Sports

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

Published

3 hours ago

on

April 4, 2025

By

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

  • Buster OlneyApr 4, 2025, 12:00 PM ET

    Close

    • Senior writer ESPN Magazine/ESPN.com
    • Analyst/reporter ESPN television
    • Author of “The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty”

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.

Said Yankees manager Aaron Boone: “It’s taken on a life of its own.”

play

0:36

Olney: ‘Torpedo’ bats could be catching the eye of MLB teams

Buster Olney reports on the Braves exploring the new “torpedo” bats the Yankees have been using and how other teams could explore it as well.

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.

Continue Reading

Sports

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

Published

3 hours ago

on

April 4, 2025

By

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.

Continue Reading

Trending