The Yankees’ Anthony Volpe uses one of the team’s torpedo bats against the Milwaukee Brewers on Saturday, March 29, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)
(ASSOCIATED PRESS)
There are always plenty of unknowns to start any new season, and entering the 2025 Major League Baseball season, one of the biggest ones was the park factors relating to the Oakland Athletics playing their home games in Sacramento.
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But the “torpedo bat” is what everyone in the sport is talking about the first week of the new season — including bookmakers.
Aaron Leanhardt — an MIT-educated physics professor and former New York Yankees minor league hitting coordinator — helped design the new bats, beginning in the 2023 season, per ESPN’s Jeff Passan. By keeping the total amount of wood in the bat the same, but redistributing more to the barrel, the torpedo bats allow hitters to make more — and better — contact and increase bad speed. And yes, the bats are legal under MLB rules.
The Yankees hit 15 home runs over their first three games, including nine in one game against the Milwaukee Brewers.
DraftKings Sportsbook has clearly noticed and has begun listing players who have used torpedo bats in a separate category, highlighting different markets for them in home runs, RBI, total bases and doubles. Those players are still able to be used in same-game parlays.
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Bookmakers will surely be tracking the impact of the new bats, and bettors will likely notice changes in daily odds on player props for those who use them.
The number of total players who are confirmed to have used the bats is only in the teens so far, but will grow throughout the season. The Yankees are the team with the most players (four) using the torpedo bats — Austin Wells, Cody Bellinger, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Paul Goldschmidt.
Elly De La Cruz (Cincinnati Reds), Francisco Lindor (New York Mets) and Junior Caminero (Tampa Bay Rays) are tied with the best odds to hit at least one home run Tuesday at +450 on DraftKings. Nico Hoerner (Chicago Cubs) has the longest odds to hit at least one HR at 20-1.
It should be another interesting betting storyline to follow this season.
