PULLMAN, Wash. — The New York Yankees took the baseball world by storm with the newly designed torpedo bat last year, but the revolutionary design has ended up being no better than a standard bat for hitting the ball out of the park.
In the first-ever laboratory experiments done on the bat, a research team determined that the torpedo bat and traditional bat perform equally well in hitting power with only a slight difference in the location of the bat’s sweet spot. The researchers, including Lloyd Smith from Washington State University, Alan Nathan from University of Illinois and Daniel Russell from Penn State University, will present their work at the upcoming International Sports Engineering Association conference set for June 1–4 on the Pullman campus.
“Wood is wood,” said Smith, professor in WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and director of the university’s Sports Science Laboratory.
Smith said he wasn’t exactly surprised at the findings. He has been studying bats for a couple of decades and has seen lots of excitement over the years — as when people debated ash versus maple bats, for instance. The news about the torpedo bats confirms his theory that wood material just doesn’t have a lot of pizazz.
“When it comes to baseball, there’s not a lot you can do with wood,” he said. “If your goal is to keep the game steady and consistent and not have a lot of change, wood bats are good.”
If your goal is to keep the game steady and consistent and not have a lot of change, wood bats are good.
Lloyd Smith, professor
Sports Science Laboratory director
Washington State University
The torpedo bat went viral, receiving worldwide attention in spring 2025 when the New York Yankees used the new type of bat for the first time in a game and set a team record, hitting nine home runs in that game.
Although the torpedo bat can be the same weight as a standard bat, it has a slightly different shape. The diameter of a traditional bat tapers from the handle to the barrel and then gradually increases to the tip of the bat. Researchers who made the torpedo bat removed wood from the barrel tip and added it to the sweet spot, so that the diameter tapers down from the sweet spot to the tip.
For the study, the researchers created two maple bats that were duplicates of a standard Major League Baseball bat. Two additional maple bats were made with a torpedo shaped barrel that gave them the same swing weight as the standard bat. To measure the bats’ ball-bat coefficient of restitution, or how much energy the bat returns to the ball, the researchers fired baseballs from an air cannon at a stationary bat and then used light gates and cameras to measure the speed of the incoming and rebounding ball.
Which is better?
There may be a slight difference in the location of the sweet spot, but WSU researchers determined that torpedo bats and traditional bats performed equally well regarding hitting power.
The team found nearly identical performance for the torpedo and standard bats except that the sweet spot for the torpedo bat was a half inch farther from the bat tip than the standard bat.
“It was actually pretty phenomenal how close they were,” said Smith.
Of course, baseball players don’t care how much energy is lost — they just want to know how far the ball can be hit, said Smith.
In that case, the bats have the same swing weight, so that if a batter were blindfolded, he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference in how they felt. But because the ideal spot to hit the ball is closer in than on a standard bat, the torpedo bat will actually hit the ball a little bit slower than a standard bat would, he said.
“If you’re comparing both bats at the sweet spot, the ball hitting the torpedo bat is going to be traveling a little bit slower than the standard bat, so it will hit the ball not quite as fast or as far,” said Smith.
For some players who like to hit the ball closer in, the torpedo bat might be a better option for them, though, he added. And because the barrel is wider in a place where those batters do hit, they will be more likely to hit the ball more often — giving players a higher batting average.
Media Contacts
- Lloyd Smith, WSU School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering, 509-335-3221, lvsmith@wsu.edu
- Tina Hilding, Voiland College of Engineering and Architecture Communications, 509-335-5095, thilding@wsu.edu
