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Throughout the season, the CBS Sports MLB experts will bring you a weekly Batting Around roundtable breaking down pretty much anything. The latest news, a historical question, thoughts about the future of baseball, all sorts of stuff. Last week we debated the length of the regular season. This week we’re going to tackle the new torpedo bats.
Should MLB ban torpedo bats?
R.J. Anderson: I feel unqualified to say. Over the weekend, my belief was that it was much ado about nothing. To some extent, I think that’s still the most likely outcome; precedent suggests the torpedo bat probably won’t be a game-changing (let alone game-breaking) development. But I don’t know what I don’t know on this matter, and I’m willing to give everything some more time to develop — especially after few people in the game (who I trust and respect) came out hard against these bats to me.
Matt Snyder: No and I think the whining about this is pretty embarrassing. I saw someone the other day say “how is this legal?” That’s an easy answer. Read the rule. Then tell me how the bats would not be legal. Good luck. As to the question on whether or not the league should rework the rules, I think we probably need to get a bit more of a sample than around one week. But hey, the Yankees scored a lot of runs and a bunch of Yankee haters got to puff out their chests and cry about “cheating.” At least that was entertaining.
Dayn Perry: I think it’s too soon to say. They’re plainly not illegal now, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be banned at some point in the future, provided stakeholders can agree to the rules changes. I really think we need to see what it does to the engine of the game. More offense isn’t a bad thing from an entertainment standpoint, but does this potential higher quality of contact come at a cost of less contact overall? One of the last things baseball needs is more strikeouts. Let’s see what it the torpedo bat does, if it even does anything measurable at all over a larger sample, before we decide what to do with it.
Mike Axisa: The “correct” answer is it’s too soon to say. We’ve known about these things for less than a week and we really have no idea how much they increase offense, if at all. I think that, unless nine-homer games become commonplace, MLB should allow torpedo bats and even go out their way to make it clear they are legal. The league has been looking for ways to reduce strikeouts and increase offense the last few years, right? Infield shifts have been mostly eliminated, the foreign substance ban is actually enforced, etc. Torpedo bats are an opportunity to increase offense (in theory) without a rule change. This is a dream scenario for MLB. Torpedo bats already comply with the rules, so the league doesn’t have to change anything. The change has already happened. Personally, I’m in favor of anything that favors the offense. Pitchers and defenses have enough advantages as it is. Let’s do something for the hitters for once.
