Don't blame Yankees for pushing the envelope and using torpedo bats

After the first weekend of MLB’s 2025 season, the thing everyone is talking about is bats. The New York Yankees‘ bats, specifically, thanks to their use of a recent innovation in baseball hardware. The “torpedo” bat is a newer design, and was in use before 2025. But after a weekend in which the Yankees’ offense dominated, it’s getting more attention now than ever before.

While the Yankees’ use of the bats has been criticized by some, Colin Cowherd doesn’t think they should face scrutiny. In fact, he’s in favor of the torpedo bats, pointing out that the real problem people have is with which team this sudden interest arose from.

“Everybody’s freaking out, and I think they’re really freaking out because it’s the Yankees. If this was the Rays, or the Diamondbacks, it wouldn’t be nearly the story,” Cowherd said on Monday’s “The Herd.” “[Anthony] Volpe was struggling to hit, and so they did something totally legal, and it has been a massive home run.”

That legality has been the point of contention for fans just hearing about the torpedoes. But as Cowherd said, these torpedo bats are legal: They do not go against MLB’s rules for bat dimensions, as they simply shifted the weight of the bat to a place where it could, in theory, be better utilized by the player swinging it.

As FOX Sports’ Deesha Thosar put it, the bat “resembles a bowling pin because the barrel was moved a little further down and closer to the label. The bat shape is uniquely designed for each hitter’s sweet spot, or the area on the bat where he most often makes contact with the ball. If a hitter is used to hitting the ball on the label, the torpedo bats are designed so that there is more wood — and more mass — in that sweet spot.”

Thosar also reported that, per a league source, the bats do not “violate the Official Baseball Rules or the Bat Supplier Regulations.” Yankees’ second baseman Jazz Chisolm Jr. echoed that fact on social media on Monday morning.

“Okay explanation the barrel is bigger and within mlb regulation! For the idiots that say it’s moved to the label you’re an idiot! Nobody is trying to get jammed you just move the wood from the parts you don’t use to the parts you do! You’re welcome no more stress for y’all !” Chisholm wrote.

As the Yankees are playing within the rules, Cowherd made a cross-sport comparison, believing they’re pulling a page out of a legendary football coach’s playbook.

“You know what this is? It’s peak Bill Belichick,” Cowherd said. “He knows the rule book better than you do … all the Yankees did [was shift] weight from the barrel. They didn’t make the diameter illegal, they didn’t shift the length of it. They just slightly shifted it.”

While this might lead to a revolution in bat design, Cowherd points out that “not every batter needs it,” a group that includes the Yankees’ foremost slugger, Aaron Judge. That could change with time, however.

“We’ve seen this with golf and tennis, seen innovations. And my take on sports has always been push the envelope,” Cowherd said.

That appears to be what the Yankees — and any other club that’s been utilizing the torpedo-style bats — are doing. If they continue to hit like they have to start the season — as Cowherd notes, they’re first in practically every offensive category after a strong opening weekend — then maybe more and more of the rest of the league will be using those bowling pins to hit baseballs, too.

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