This baseball bat is a home run! During the New York Yankees’ first three games this season, all eyes were on the torpedo bat. The Yankees hit a team record nine homers in their second game. Five were made with a torpedo bat!
Baseball bats have two parts: a handle and a barrel. The barrel is the cylinder-shaped part that hits the ball. A torpedo bat’s barrel is widest in the middle. That change “takes away some of the mass at the end of the barrel and moves it farther down to the sweet spot” where batters aim to hit the ball, says Patrick Drane at the Baseball Research Center. This change helps some batters better connect with the ball—and knock it out of the park!