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

(thelibertyline.com)
302 points cf100clunk | 1 comments | 31 Mar 25 15:27 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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kaycebasques ◴[31 Mar 25 16:03 UTC] No.43536546[source]▶
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

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SkyPuncher ◴[31 Mar 25 17:12 UTC] No.43537319[source]▶
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.

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cool_dude85 ◴[31 Mar 25 19:27 UTC] No.43538823[source]▶
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.

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1. VWWHFSfQ ◴[31 Mar 25 20:43 UTC] No.43539755[source]▶
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.