Ex-MLB'er Kevin Smith gives Grant & Danny a primer on how torpedo bats work, and came to be
The torpedo bat has burst on the scene in Major League Baseball, getting an especially loud welcome after the Yankees hit approximately 239 home runs (give or take) with several players using them in their season-opening series.
But what is it about this bat shape that’s making waves? Maryland alum and ex-MLB player Kevin Smith has worked closely with MIT grad and current Marlins field coordinator Aaron Leanhardt, who developed the bat, and gave Grant & Danny a bit of a primer on how the research came to be:
Even though the torpedo bats have a unique look, honestly, not all ‘regular’ bats are created equal, either, so changing technology in this way seems radical, but is just part of the evolution of sports science.
“You see a bunch of different models being used, with bugger barrels or more taper, but a lot of it comes down to just what was understood about bats. Everyone is told (different things), so I’d ask Lenny about it, and the difference is if you can make it to kind of fit your own swing and your batted ball data, it's more of a customized approach to the individual player,” Smith said. “When you have a bat that fits you like that and fits your batted ball data, you can actually go a little heavier because you're bringing some of the wood down closer to your hand, and you can get it a little more dense. There’s a lot of stuff behind the scenes that has to go into making them work, so it's going to be interesting to see how people implement them moving forward.”
So, then, what took so long to get to this point?
“That's a great question. When I sat down with Lenny and first saw the bats, it made perfect sense, in my mind, to put the most wood and the most mass in the area where you hit most of your balls,” Smith said. “Maybe it’s not having the data, or the aesthetics – they do look a little funny – so it probably takes someone super smart to dumb it down to guys like us and explain it to where it makes sense. But I think the athletes that that use them initially should get a lot of credit as well; to switch to something like this that’s unproven…that’s their livelihood, they've worked their whole life to get there, and now they're trusting this new science and this new bat.”
Listen to Smith’s entire visit with Grant & Danny above!
