SEATTLE – Julio Rodriguez is curious. Cal Raleigh and Jorge Polanco are, too.
It wouldn’t be accurate to say they’re chomping at the bit to test out the trendy “torpedo” bats that have become the talk of baseball in the first week of the season, but the Mariners sluggers are planning to experiment with the new bats at some point.
“Yeah, I’ll give it a try,” Rodriguez said. “We’ll see.”
The Mariners are in the process of ordering a handful of the torpedo bats from manufacturers this week.
The bats became a national story after the New York Yankees tied an MLB record with 15 home runs in their first three games of the season — including a club record nine homers in a 20-9 romp of the Milwaukee Brewers on Saturday.
Five Yankees used the torpedo bats, which are shaped like a bowling pin and feature a thicker barrel before thinning off toward the end. Traditional bats maintain the same circumference through the sweet spot to the tip of the bat.
“The concept makes so much sense,” Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe told reporters Sunday. “I know I’m bought in. The bigger you can have the barrel where you hit the ball, it makes sense to me.”
Major League Baseball has confirmed, per multiple reports, that the bats are legal for players to use.
None of the Mariners hitters polled before Monday’s series opener against Detroit had tried out the torpedo bat yet. But they should arrive in the Mariners clubhouse soon enough.
“It’s an interesting phenomenon,” manager Dan Wilson said. “I really don’t have any idea what it’s like or how it feels in the hand or what the differences are.”
Wilson compared it to the “Axe Bat” — which features a handle shaped like an ax — that become popular in recent years. A couple years ago, some players started using a bat that had a hockey-puck shaped handle.
“We’ve seen technology affect the game over time,” Wilson said “I think it’s just really early to tell (with the torpedo bat).”
The torpedo bat is the brainchild of former Yankees minor-league hitting instructor Aaron Leanhardt, an MIT-educated former physics professor. The Miami Marlins hired him to their major-league coaching staff for this season.
Over the past decade, pitchers have benefited greatly from the introduction of new technologies in the sport. Leanhardt designed the new bat as a way to try to balance the playing field for hitters.
“Credit to any of the players who were willing to listen to me, because it’s crazy,” Leanhardt told ESPN. “Listening to me describe it is sometimes even crazier. It’s a long-running project, and I’m happy for the guys that bought into it.”
Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers started experimenting with the torpedo bat in spring training and then carried it over to the start of the regular season.
“The bat is such a unique tool,” Jeffers told ESPN. “You look at the history of the game, and they used to swing telephone poles. Now you try to optimize it, and it feels like some branches are starting to fall for us on the hitting side of things.
“There’s going to be a lot more teams wanting to swing them because of what the Yankees did this weekend.”