How to assess the impact of a torpedo bat? These are the stats to look at

You know the deal by now: The New York Yankees hit a bajillion home runs on opening weekend, with several of the sluggers involved swinging “torpedo” bats that are crafted more like bowling pins than the traditionally-shaped sticks we’ve seen for decades. As a result, the baseball industry and an astonishingly wide audience beyond it have taken an immense interest in the origins of this bat innovation and how it might impact the game moving forward.

In the days since New York’s dinger barrage, we’ve gained some clarity on the development of these new bats over the past few years and how multiple other teams had been experimenting with them behind the scenes but had yet to get buy-in from players the way the Yankees did to open 2025. Perhaps most notably, it was revealed that Giancarlo Stanton was swinging a version of a torpedo bat for large portions of last season, including his epic run in October, without anyone drawing attention to it. That this recent phenomenon was hiding in plain sight in the hands of one of baseball’s most prominent sluggers adds to the peculiar nature of this saga.

Advertisement

As torpedo bats have spread beyond the Bronx, the early reviews have been mixed. Some big leaguers are already praising the bat’s effects, while others have ditched them mid-game. With the production of such bats soaring via multiple manufacturers across the country, we’ve also seen several high-profile content creators test the bats for themselves, offering an imperfect yet intriguing experiment compared to the variant circumstances in which torpedo bats have been deployed at the major-league level.

With just two weeks of games in the bank, we don’t have nearly enough data to draw any conclusions about exactly how and how much these bats are helping hitters, especially with the usage of the bats so scattered across the league. But based on our early understanding of the intentions behind the design and the physics of torpedo bats, there are certain numbers worth monitoring as the sample of performance from players swinging new sticks grows.

In other words, if torpedo bats are designed to help certain hitters elevate their offensive game, what measures should we look at to assess whether that’s happening? Despite what happened on that record-breaking Saturday afternoon in the Bronx, it cannot and should not simply be about the home run total. Instead, here are three metrics to keep an eye on that could help us better understand these bats’ effectiveness with a larger sample of data.

Bat speed

One of the benefits of moving the barrel closer to the hands and lessening the weight on the end is that the bat theoretically becomes easier to swing, in turn increasing the speed at which a hitter can swing it. While MLB’s ever-evolving Statcast apparatus has published detailed batted-ball data dating to 2015, bat tracking is a far more recent addition to the space, rolled out about a year ago. It’s tremendously convenient that this data was introduced when it was, as we now have a point of reference for how fast hitters were swinging the bat in 2024. Take a look at which players have demonstrated the greatest year-over-year improvement in average bat speed, and sure enough, you’ll find several of the torpedo-swinging Yankees near the top, with Anthony Volpe, Cody Bellinger and Austin Wells all increasing their average bat speed by 1.4-2 mph.

Advertisement

The key caveat when tracking these potential gains is that there are ways beyond the bat for players to increase their bat speed. A prime example from this season can be found in the same Yankees lineup — and not from a player swinging different lumber. Ben Rice showed some promising signs as a rookie last year and has emerged this spring as New York’s go-to option at designated hitter with Stanton on the shelf. In 2024, Rice’s average bat speed was 71.4 mph; so far in 2025, after an offseason in which he notably added more muscle, that number is up to 74.6 mph. His power and patience are amplified by the increase in swing speed, enabling greater impact when he makes contact. Sure enough, Rice’s surface-level stats (1.115 OPS) and underlying metrics (97th percentile xwOBA) are looking mighty impressive through two weeks of play.

Perhaps most importantly, we can put stock in this metric without an enormous sample of data, as these are explicit changes to a player’s physical capabilities. It would take months, if not years, of Volpe slugging nearly .600 to conclude that he is that caliber of power hitter, but the fact that he has shown he can swing the bat faster more consistently is an indisputable, tangible change. Whether it leads to improved results over the long haul remains to be seen, but his demonstrated higher ceiling in bat speed makes it more plausible that an uptick in slugging can be achieved than if his bat speed still ranked in the 17th percentile.

Hard-hit rate

Hitters do not need elite bat speed to have success, but gains in bat speed can result in higher exit velocities, and hitting the ball harder tends to translate to more hits. Statcast defines a hard-hit ball as one hit with at least a 95 mph exit velocity. In 2024, balls hit with a 95+ mph exit velocity had a .490 batting average league-wide; balls hit below that threshold had just a .218 average.

Advertisement

By moving the barrel lower and altering the “sweet spot,” torpedo bats are intended to help hitters make quality contact more often, and hard-hit rate, or the percentage of balls put in play at 95+ mph, encapsulates how consistently hitters are making stellar contact over their entire sample of batted balls. If players swinging torpedo bats exhibit a notable uptick in hard-hit rate — the way Volpe has demonstrated so far, going from 35% in 2024 to 48% in 2025 — that would be another indication that the benefits of swinging a new bat are translating from theory to reality.

Again, it’s less about looking at how many home runs a player has hit with these new bats in a small sample and more about examining what underlying skills have changed to give a player a higher chance at success over a larger sample of data.

Barrel rate

Similar to hard-hit rate, barrel rate specifically focuses on a player’s ability to impact the ball with the optimal combination of exit velocity and launch angle, resulting in the highest likelihood of not just high batting averages but also high slugging. Hitting the ball hard is cool and good, but if a player is frequently smashing the ball into the ground, the gains in bat speed and exit velocity aren’t very helpful. Sure, a ball hit hard on the ground might have a better chance of being a hit than a soft chopper, but it has an infinitely smaller chance of being a home run than a well-struck ball that is put in the air.

Advertisement

If a hitter is able to marry high-quality contact with putting the ball in the air, that’s when good things tend to happen. Among the torpedo-swinging Yankees, this is where Jazz Chisholm Jr. has shined in particular. While his bat speed isn’t notably different from what he demonstrated the past two years, he has been elevating the ball with much greater frequency this spring, perhaps as a result of an increased ability to access his newly altered sweet spot. In Jazz’s case, it might be less about lacking the bat speed and more about adjusting his bat to better enable him to access his raw power.

As with Volpe’s hard-hit rate gains, it’s too early to determine whether Chisholm’s upticks will sustain — we’re talking about a few dozen batted balls, a fraction of the average sample of 400-plus batted balls that an every-day hitter produces over the course of a season — but if these two Yankees remain at the top of these categories’ year-over-year gainers a few months from now, it will be hard not to look at their adoption of torpedo bats and wonder how many other players might benefit from making the switch.