torpedo bat
noun
a baseball bat with a thicker-than-usual barrel
What does torpedo bat mean?
Torpedo bat refers to a wooden baseball bat that is thicker toward its end than a standard bat before tapering off. Torpedo bats have the same maximum length and maximum diameter as regular bats, but with more mass distributed where the ball typically makes (good) contact.
Examples of torpedo bat
With the Yankees sharing mixed feelings on the torpedo bats, Boone said that the team is not recommending them to players. Instead, it’s up to individual hitters if they want to use them.
—Gary Phillips, The Oneida (New York) Daily Dispatch, 30 Mar. 2025
As a baseball fan interested in physics, I found myself asking, “How do these new torpedo bats work?” Obviously, most would intuit that, if a bat is swung at a given speed, hitting the ball with the heaviest part makes it go farther. But why?
—Well it didn’t take long for torpedo bats to reach the youth. What will happen with metal bats? Can you make a metal torpedo bat?
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Where does torpedo bat come from?
The bats have apparently been used by some major league players since 2023, but torpedo bat only began to appear in print in March of 2025. The bats are so named due to their shape, which resembles that of some torpedos (thin cylindrical self-propelled underwater projectiles).
The bat’s profile jumped from curiosity to hype monster in the season’s first weekend when the New York Yankees went berserk with home runs against Milwaukee. Several of the Yankees players were using torpedo bats for the first time. Popularity in the bat surged, and bat companies have been cranking out models ever since. The bat’s barrel has a bowling pin-like shape that puts the heartiest part of the barrel lower for a wider area of contact and then tapers toward the end.
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How is torpedo bat used?
Righties swing it from right to left, lefties from left to right.
