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

(thelibertyline.com)
302 points cf100clunk | 2 comments | 31 Mar 25 15:27 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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adregan ◴[31 Mar 25 18:49 UTC] No.43538354[source]▶
Baseball is the king of misleading small samples. It’s usually best not to jump to any conclusions as the article does so early in the season (ban them! After 3 games?!). There is a lot of randomness in the data.

And if the season proves that these bats are indeed juicier than others? Probably MLB will let it lie. Offense is down enough already and all of the recent rules changes are intended to support offense.

replies(1): >>43538978 #
1. basisword ◴[31 Mar 25 19:41 UTC] No.43538978[source]▶
Have they been using them in spring training? That's still early but a much better sample size if so.
replies(1): >>43540299 #
2. adregan ◴[31 Mar 25 21:41 UTC] No.43540299[source]▶
Spring training at bats aren’t equivalent—hitters and pitchers aren’t approaching an at bat as they do in the regular season. But it’s no matter as we’re going to need to see a lot more plate appearances before the stats would be reliable indicators. Fangraphs[0] has a good guide to sample size. Slugging, for example, isn’t stable until 320 at bats. We’ll check back in mid July or so.

Also, we haven’t given pitchers a chance to adapt. Perhaps pitching outside (now a thinner part of the bat) will take the force out of the hit leading to softer contact.

0: https://library.fangraphs.com/principles/sample-size/