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

I think it's quite cool (disclaimer: I am indeed a dirty Yankees fan)

Hitting is really hard. If you feel up to it, and can find a public batting cage near you that has a fast pitch machine (usually maxes out 75-85mph which is 20+ mph less than your typical MLB fastball), give it a shot. When you hit the ball away from the sweet spot, especially on the parts closer to your hands, it really freaking hurts and throws off subsequent swings.

If the few players who are using this bat tend to hit that spot naturally, it makes a lot of sense to modify the bat to accommodate it, within the rules like they've done here. Hitting is super, super difficult especially today with how far we're pushing pitchers. Love seeing them try to innovate.

Plus, reminder, most of the team isn't using it. Judge clobbered the ball that day with his normal bat. Brewer's pitching is injured, and the starter that day was a Yankee last year and the team is intimately familiar with his game.

If every player ends up with a bat custom tailored to their swing this will get very interesting.

FWIW they already for the most part do have bats tailored to what they like to feel in their swings as far as where weight is, where the barrel begins, what shape it is, what the grip/knob feels like. I can't say how much data goes in to deciding what is used vs what they like to feel, this feels like more of a renaissance in attempting to use data somewhere else than brilliance in design.

My intuition tells me this whole thing is stupid and a fad, sure you might get slightly more mass behind the ball on perfectly barreled swings, but you get so few of those on the year already, were they already home runs of XBH on the old bat? And what are we losing on mishits with the skinny end of barrel, since after all hitting is more than just perfect swings caught in the right spot. Seems like more of a push towards feast or famine, 3 outcome baseball, which I personally just ain't a fan of.