MIAMI — Griffin Canning woke up Monday morning to a text from his grandmother in Southern California. She wasn’t asking about his first start with his new team or anything of that nature. No, she was asking the Mets right-hander about the one thing in baseball everyone seems to want to talk about this week: torpedo bats.
“I was not expecting that text,” Canning told the Daily News on Monday afternoon at LoanDepot Park. “I think that just shows how far the reach has gone. It’s kind of been blown out of proportion a little bit.”
This seems to be the attitude around the revelatory bats in the Mets clubhouse. They don’t quite understand why everyone from Canning’s grandmother to CNN is discussing the bats that look a little like inverted bowling pins with a fat barrel toward the top of the bat instead of a bat that narrows at the handle and tapers out evenly from there.
The creation of Aaron Leanhardt, a former physics professor who was educated at MIT and taught at the University of Michigan before becoming a hitting coordinator with the Yankees and a field coordinator with the Miami Marlins, the bats suddenly became controversial over the weekend when the Yankees hit 15 homers in their first series of the season. They hit nine alone Saturday in a rout of the Milwaukee Brewers, and four more Sunday.
Suddenly, the issue blew up like… well, like it had been hit by a torpedo. The Mets don’t really understand why.
Clay Holmes said he had “no opinion” on the bats, especially when he found out that Aaron Judge doesn’t use them. Jesse Winker, who is never short on opinions, had “no take.” Other players just shrugged.
The bats have been around for a few years, at least since 2023, and bat companies have long been working with the distribution of weight to help hitters get an edge.
“There were guys using them last year,” said Mets outfielder and former Yankees slugger Juan Soto. “I had teammates last year that asked me if I wanted to try it, but it never caught my attention.”
Soto seems open to trying one, but maybe not intrigued. The numbers speak for themselves with players like Soto. But he understands the appeal.
“Some of the other teams use it,” Soto said. “They’re just trying to find something where the hitters feel more balanced. Every swing is different and everybody is going to feel different with a different kind of bat. It’s just finding a way to make it better for them.”
Second baseman Jeff McNeil infamously used a knob-less model that looked more like a closet rod than a baseball bat for a few years, even winning a batting title with it. Made by Dove Tail, McNeil found exactly what Soto said hitters are seeking when trying different bats — balance. McNeil liked the untraditional model because he said he felt balanced in his swing with it.
Players are using the tools they have available in their toolboxes. There’s nothing wrong with innovation, so long as it’s legal.
“I think the best comparison we came up with is golf clubs,” Canning said. “They do kind of the same thing. They can tailor it to how you swing. They can make it so if you always miss one way, they’re going to angle it so it doesn’t go that way as much.”
The torpedo bats likely won’t change the way anyone pitches, but pitchers will pay attention to the type of bats hitters are using and read their swings. A pitcher might be able to see some tendencies in swings if a hitter walks up using a torpedo bat.
“Someone like [Yankees shortstop] Anthony Volpe, let’s say he always gets jammed a little bit, maybe it can give you some insight into his approach,” Canning said. “If it’s a thing, everyone will start doing it, right?”
It hasn’t caught on for the Mets yet. Francisco Lindor used one in Houston over the weekend after being given a few of the bats toward the end of spring training, but so far, he seems to be the only one of the Amazin’s to have even acquired one. The feeling of the bat is different enough that it’s not one that you can just pick up and use in the middle of a game, hitters need to take swings with it first and practice with it to be able to get a feel for how the weight works.
And it’s not a bat that will work for everyone.
“The way I see it, what if you are a guy that gets the barrel out, and you’re always out front?” said manager Carlos Mendoza.
Well, then the bat might not be for you.
The key is still pitching. Like Brewers manager Pat Murphy said, “It ain’t the wand, it’s the magician.” Maybe that’s the message Canning can deliver to his grandma in Temecula.
“As pitchers, we have a lot of different tools that are pretty popular now and kind of needed,” Canning said. “So it’s only a matter of time before the hitters start figuring some stuff out on their side too.”
