The New York Yankees have been the talk of baseball over the opening weekend of the regular season. After a 4-2 win over the Milwaukee Brewers on Opening Day, New York teed off on Milwaukee pitching over the weekend, scoring a combined 32 runs thanks to a whopping 13 homers between Saturday and Sunday.
Aaron Judge is unreal!
— MLB (@MLB) March 30, 2025
He has FOUR homers already this season 🤯 pic.twitter.com/7El1LWblYa
But it wasn't just the history-making dinger barrage that got people's attention. It was what helped spark it: As revealed by the YES Network broadcast during Saturday's game, several Yankees players (though not, pointedly, Aaron Judge) have adopted a new bat design dubbed the "torpedo bat," which shifts weight toward the label to create a larger sweet spot.
Michael Kay explains that the Yankees made new bats "where they moved a lot of the wood into the label so the harder part of the bat is going to strike the ball."
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) March 29, 2025
Seems relevant today... pic.twitter.com/cpldzigdrT
Almost immediately, fans started crying foul, accusing the Yankees of essentially juicing their equipment. But in fact, nothing about the torpedo bat is against MLB rules, which allow for a wide variety of bat types to be used. Heck, New York wasn't even the only team using them this weekend — although that's not liable to make Brewers fans feel much better, given the source.
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Yankees weren't the first team to hop on the torpedo bat trend
Before everyone started losing their minds about the nefarious Yankees, Chicago Cubs infielder Nico Hoerner was using a very similar design in his team's series against the Arizona Diamondbacks.
Everyone thinking the #Yankees started a trend with the torpedo bats yesterday: #Cubs Nico Hoerner swung one in the first two games in Arizona Thursday and Friday. pic.twitter.com/LDOvkzepjs
— Cubbies Crib (@CubbiesCrib) March 30, 2025
Again, there's no rule saying that all teams have to use the exact same bat design; players have been experimenting with sizes and weights for years now. This is just the next step in that evolution, and it's not as though New York is taking advantage of some proprietary secret. Of course, given the animosity between the Brewers and former manager Craig Counsell after the latter bolted to Chicago, this won't make Milwaukee feel much better about getting swept over the weekend.