MLB says Yankees’ new “torpedo bats” are legal and likely coming

If only the Yankees get access to it (e.g. they patented it and won't let other teams use it) then I could see it as an unfair advantage. In most other areas of America life, though, this innovation would be allowed or even celebrated.

I imagine it will go the way of the brilliant strategic innovation a few years back of shifting defenders heavily depending on the batter's statistical hitting patterns. It'll get banned because it makes the game more boring. If home runs happen all the time, they lose their excitement. I imagine it's quite expensive or impossible to shift the outfield walls back farther in most MLB stadiums.

I actually would love more of a no holds barred evolutionary battle in the MLB [1] but I know it's not gonna happen.

[1] https://youtu.be/gTmLz9B8wls

This has the potential to multiply the issues with Fenway and other older fields dramatically.

> If home runs happen all the time, they lose their excitement.

TV ratings show otherwise - in every instance so far, HRs put butts in seats, and defense makes people change the channel. TV and ballpark analytics show this to be true. The common thought is that's why the league ignored abuse during the steroid era so much.

edit - This is also the driving force behind multiple 'juiced ball' conspiracy theories.

Or we could just let the robots play https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZqB6rY94DCw&t=55s (and football too) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=818agkUTpqM&t=69s

Title of the url says it all: https://old.reddit.com/r/baseball/comments/1e5mwbs/mlb_home_...

It's not about watching home runs; it's mostly about watching a competitive game.

For sure, that makes a lot of intuitive sense. I was thinking that there's a sweet spot with HRs. If it gets too common then it may be less of a dopamine hit. Kinda like how the randomness of slot machines is fine-tuned to maximize addictive potential.

However, one could argue the same thing about Curry and 3 pointers. My original argument suggests that seeing someone makes loads more 3 pointers would be boring. Yet it was very exciting to see him smash through previously unthinkable records. On the other hand, that was not driven by technological change…

While home runs are exciting, there are limits to that. For several years the MLB has been dealing with "three true outcomes", where a large percentage of at bats end in either a strikeout, walk, or home run.

While this can be exciting for individual at bats, it becomes pretty boring if it's too common. This is because it invalidates every role except the pitcher and batter, and removes a lot of strategy from the game. While this may be fine if you only watch the occasional game, it can get really dull if you watch a lot of games every season.

Home runs are a lot of fun! One of the things that makes baseball exciting is that every pitch has the potential to result in a home run. This adds a lot of tension to the game, and helps keep things engaging. But when home runs become too prevalent, it eliminates other fun aspects of baseball, and makes the game one dimensional and dull.

Yes, because home runs still are not that regular of an occurrence. So they're still "special".

But if they become a lot more commonplace, then the allure will depreciate over time.

If only the Yankees get access to this, the rest of the league will simply vote to outlaw it.

You see something similar going on in football, right now, with a play known as the "tush push". It's not a particularly complex play, but for some reason the Philadelphia Eagles can pull it off astoundingly better than anyone else in the league. In response, several teams are petitioning rules to outlaw it. All it takes is enough teams to vote for banning this play and it's gone.

I believe the opposite to that era is the "Dead-ball era" over a hundred years ago.

> During the dead-ball era, baseball was much more of a strategy-driven game, using a style of play now known as small ball or inside baseball. It relied much more on plays such as stolen bases and hit-and-run than on home runs.

This was likely caused by reusing baseballs more, so it should be easy to recreate,

> Before 1921, it was common for a baseball to be in play for over 100 pitches. Players used the same ball until it started to unravel. Early baseball leagues were very cost-conscious, so fans had to throw back balls that had been hit into the stands. The longer the ball was in play, the softer it became—and hitting a heavily used, softer ball for distance is much more difficult than hitting a new, harder one. The ball was also softer to begin with, making home runs less likely.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dead-ball_era

The have the rule where the team defending the field goal is not allowed to act like a “locomotive” to push thru and try to block the kick, which would almost certainly work because the edge blockers cannot just defend come inside to defend it.

The tush push shouldn’t be allowed because is almost impossible to defend, sort of an automatic 1 yarder once you get there. The snapping team always have advantage because they know the start timing and the defense always has to react a split second later.

3 pointers are actually the opposite problem; they turn out to be more efficient but they make the game a lot more boring to watch.

In both cases why not?

1. Make the kicker kick from farther out in that case. Pretty simple change.

2. 1 yard is kind of nothing in this league now when the referees have so much leeway to change yardage. They get the spot wrong ALL the damn time now. So what if it's automatic for some teams. And so what if the offense has the advantage there. That's sport. Same thing in soccer on penalty kicks, the kicker has the advantage there knowing where he's going to kick.

how do you ban shifting defenders? i admittedly know nothing about baseball, but surely the team can dispatch its people wherever it likes within the legal zone for them to be at all.

Before the shift ban, there could be 3 players on one side of 2nd base. The rule now is that there have to be two fielders on either side on 2nd when the pitch is delivered. Essentially, they changed the legal zone

Is almost impossible to defend when done by a particular team. No other team has managed the kind of sustained success with it that the Eagles have. If it was impossible to defend surely other teams would be using it too.

Tom Brady also had similar success with the standard old QB sneak during his career and I don't recall attempts to ban that.

> the "tush push". It's not a particularly complex play, but for some reason the Philadelphia Eagles can pull it off astoundingly better than anyone else in the league

I looked this up and am still unclear why only the Eagles seem to be able to perform this maneuver effectively, other than having an exceptionally strong person at the front?

Three massive offensive linemen plus a very strong QB.

It's strength, size and technique of multiple people working together.

You'd think it'd be easy to watch game footage and just replicate what the Eagles do, but other teams haven't been able to get the formula right.

This is the reason that banning it is controversial. Why make it illegal when most teams can't make work well?

One additional wrinkle to the tush push is that it WAS illegal until the mid-2000s. Sort of like the 3 point line in basketball, it has taken many years for a team to take advantage of the new rule to its fullest extent.

I think people generally take the perspective of "it used to be illegal, so it's reasonable to make it illegal again" in a way they don't when a team is just doing something new.

> You see something similar going on in football, right now, with a play known as the "tush push".

As a European that just woke up from a nap, I was having a very hard time imagning a soccer move called "tush push" that was so successful it had to be outlawed...

Their quarterback squatting 600 lbs doesn’t hurts.

They've recruited the players necessary to pull it off effectively. That's not a simple thing to remedy for other teams.

the rule for FG/XP attempts is for the safety of the long snapper, not the kicker

We'll see if the analogy holds. Every team has the ability to use bats like this.

If no other team sees an advantage from using torpedo bats, it would be a lot like the brotherly shove.

But first we'll have to see if this is a passing fad. In baseball, pitchers evolve pretty quickly and usually lead the batter-pitcher arms race.

I'm guessing it spread pretty quickly through the league and be used by a minority of hitters, and the advantage will flatten out. So a .210 hitter may hit .230. That is a big difference no doubt, but compare the game to when leading batters were hitting .330.

Contrary to popular belief, it requires a fair bit of practice to get right, which is why you see hater GMs saying oh, yeah, it's so simple we could do it if we wanted, but then they try it in a game after one practice and it fails. The Eagles spent several years practicing it, so now they're that far behind.

I don't quite get what the difference is between now and when Sosa, Bonds, and McGuire were hitting homers, where apparently homers are monotonous. Are we pretending that wasn’t peak baseball? I mean I find the whole infield outside of maybe a triple play more boring than all or nothing home run, intentional walk, and strikeout. There are no grand slams without base hits true, but without the home runs base hits are boring.

Right, but if the kicker needs to move further back in response, the tactic doesn't work anymore so the snapper is safe as well.

> they make the game a lot more boring to watch.

I disagree. Go watch some of the old games before 3 pointers. Teams would pack the defense into the key and the game would get really boring. It was also brutal--driving to the bucket on a packed defense like that would get you mugged.

3 pointers force defenses to move outward. Illegal defense penalties also helped.

There are already other teams using these bats, and it seems like they will spread pretty quickly: https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6243085/2025/03/31/mlb-torp...

I don't know why anyone would be upset about this, but baseball fans tend to be curmudgeons.

Also helps he is not exceptionally tall to keep a lower center of gravity.

Josh Allen on the bills also tries this and is very strong but it's harder for him to get as low.

It's like when people started to freak out about the "pitch clock" and how it was ruining baseball. The thing is, the pitch clock _always_ existed in the rulebook, it was just never enforced due to lack of technology and just generally never really being a problem.

And then pitchers started taking 1 minute+ to throw a dang pitch and it was ruining the flow of the game. So they started enforcing it.

> If home runs happen all the time, they lose their excitement.

So you're saying baseball gets more boring when people get better hitting the ball?

Sounds like there's something fundamentally wrong with the sport.

So long as it's not a one sided advantage, the game will be fair and way more exciting. Even now, there's a huge difference in attending, and watching on TV, a game that is 1-0 going into the 9th inning versus a game that is 5-4 going into the 9th. Even though those are even matches at that point in the game, one of them feels painful the other has had some excitement. Good defense is not as exciting as productive offense.

They need to get some rugby coaches in to teach it. That's a super-basic rugby technique, which even I (as only a very casual rugby fan) can see most teams getting wrong.

Close plays on the base paths are pretty exciting.

> I mean I find the whole infield outside of maybe a triple play more boring than all or nothing home run, intentional walk, and strikeout.

The problem is that the strikeout or walk is much more common than the home run.

That doesn't follow at all.

Imagine if, somehow, soccer players got really good at scoring goals from midfield, such that a very high proportion of goals were scored after just two touches. That's exciting or interesting for, like... one game, then it's worse than before.

Are you there to watch people score goals, or to watch people play the game?

If there's a home-run more at-bats than not, they get boring. You do want plenty of solid hits (but you also want strike-outs! And walks! And bunts! You want diversity!) but you don't want a lot of them to be homers.

A home run is only exciting if it's uncommon, otherwise it's less interesting than most other things that can happen when the ball's hit into fair territory.

The Eagles did- one of their players has a rugby background.

... On reflection, reading this thread, I think this may be yet more of the "baseball is a radio sport" thing, which is also why it dominated before TV, when football started to take over.

Descriptions of close plays are fun. Homers are flashy to watch and easy to understand. The latter may catch more casual-viewer eyeballs.

If it gives any unfair advantage at all, the Astros will figure out a way to use them ASAP.

([1,2] For those that don't get the snide reference to cheating.)

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/article/astros-cheating.html

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Houston_Astros_sign_stealing_s...

I disagree, and I've been watching basketball for 40 years. Basketball with positions was more fun to watch and objectively more popular amongst the viewing audience than this current dreck with positionless basketball and basically no travelling rules. Defenders are afraid to play defense and offensive players can just step back without a dribble to create separation. It's a terrible, boring product to watch because it's reduced the best athletes on the planet to standing around waiting for an open look at a 3. They don't need to get rid of 3s, but they need to modify what they are for. They're supposed to be a bonus shot, not the fundamental aspect of offenses. Eliminating the mid range is bad for the sport.

Aluminum bats are better than wooden bats. You need arbitrary rules on technology for sporting equipment.

I have no strong feelings on these bats, but there are concerns other than just fairness from one team to the next.

What basic rugby technique?

A rugby scrum is highly regimented, it's not the optimal way for 3 (or 5 or 8) guys to push the other team back, it's the optimal way to do it given that they must be bound in a particular way.

A rugby ruck or maul is more freeform and maybe some of the techniques from those can be applied to NFL, but small differences in rules make a big difference there too.

On a different question, though, sure, the Eagles have a massive and strong QB who is perfect for this play, but other teams have huge guys playing other positions. Why not have a different quarterback for your QB sneak / tush push plays? Specialist players for niche situations is a trademark of the NFL compared to other professional sports, and this play doesn't rely on the element of surprise. You don't need to have your best player at passing the ball also be the strongest at breaking the line.

Ohhh I get it now — the joke is that the Astros are crooks. Like, actual cheaters who got away with it. Hilarious stuff. Classic. (=

But seriously, they stole a World Series and faced zero real consequences. It’s like watching a gang of bank robbers walk free because the judge thought, “Well, gosh, they seemed like nice young men.”

Imagine if John Wilkes Booth had been caught, and the government just said, “Eh, let’s move on. No hard feelings.” That’s the Astros. MLB gave them a juice box and a pat on the head.

Total joke. Crooks.

My small daughter is watching https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Captain_Tsubasa , and I think I saw something like that in one episode.

And then they won it again. Cope.

I dig it

Philly is known as the city of brotherly love so there was a movement on r/nfl to have it be named the brotherly shove. Never quite caught on though.

Often lost in the debate is the fact that the Philly QB is uncommonly athletic for his position and that Philly typically has a top-5 O-line on any given year.

Why can’t teams just defend the three better?

nicely done.

When there was a left handed pull hitter at at the plate, the third baseman would move to where the shortstop was, the shortstop would move to second base, and the second baseman would be on shallow right field. Third base was left completely undefended. I always wondered why hitters couldn’t just practice a late swing and send a chopper down the third base line …

The new rule says there has to be two infielders on either side of of second base when the pitcher delivers They still shift just not as much

It’s effectively illegal based on how they call shooting fouls and ban hand-checking.

I was thinking of a maul, yeah. What I've spotted is NFL guys pushing with their hands on a teammate's back, instead of (like in rugby, or what the Eagles do) getting their shoulders against his ass or upper thighs, which gives more power and better leverage.

Good point about using different players, and I even think I've seen that a time or two. As for why not always do it, I'm only guessing, but there may be an inherent advantage in preserving the possibility that it won't be a "tush push" play (I mean, maybe not for the Eagles, because they're so good at it, but for other teams who aren't). Like, maybe it keeps the linebackers a step or two deeper and increases the likelihood of success; or, if they provoke a "tush push" defense that opens up a more-promising play then the QB is best placed to run the counter. I don't really know, though.

Yeah, I think that's their secret sauce. It's curious that other teams haven't followed suit.