Torpedo bats are the talk of baseball, but Lloyd Smith, director of Washington State University’s famed “Bat Lab,” says they’re likely not a game-changer for everyone.
“People are thinking that torpedo bats have this massive performance advantage. They don’t,” Smith said. “It has nothing to do with creating a super-high-performing bat, and it has everything to do with getting the batter to more reliably hit the sweet spot.”
Torpedo bats, which look sort of like an elongated bowling pin, were used by some New York Yankees in a 20-9 drubbing of the Milwaukee Brewers in late March. Suddenly, everyone was talking torpedo. And reporters nationwide wanted to talk to Smith.
That’s because the WSU Sports Science Laboratory and Smith are recognized authorities in the science of bats and balls. The lab tests and certifies bats for sports leagues and equipment manufacturers, and tests ball drag as well as strike zones for Major League Baseball.
A ball hurtles toward home plate. A batter swings. Contact.
These are rituals of the ballpark. But to Professor Lloyd Smith and his team of researchers, they’re also matters of science.
Just this week Smith has been interviewed by NPR, Scientific American, and the Atlantic, among others.
Smith said he was as surprised as anyone when some Yankees players used torpedo bats last week.
“At first glance I looked at it and said, ‘OK, that’s a clever idea, why didn’t we think about that before?’” he said. Then it was, “‘Oh wait, we do think about that, you give the batter a shorter bat.’”
A torpedo bat is customized for individual players based on where they most consistently hit a ball, called the impact location.
“Some batters just can’t seem to hit the sweet spot, so they’re trying to move the sweet spot to the batter,” he said.
Smith said the WSU lab hasn’t been asked to test the bats, which conform to MLB regulations. But he had a shop make one and tested it. “We were able to show, yeah, it’s true, when you thin the end of the bat down you do move the sweet spot inside.”
He added, “my feeling is there’s going to be a fairly small subset of players this will benefit, but we’ll have to wait and see.”
Still, the torpedo bat has injected some fun into the 2025 baseball season. Said Smith, “Who would have guessed that boring wood bats would become exciting again?”
