Boston Red Sox star Alex Bregman is joining the trend, as he teased a switch to the Torpedo bat for the season ahead.
Bregman sat out on Tuesday, making Wednesday’s game in Baltimore the perfect chance to see if he’ll take the field with the buzzworthy Torpedo bat. The New York Yankees have already made waves across MLB with their custom-made bats.
The Yankees put on a hitting clinic over the weekend, with five players swinging the much-debated Torpedo bat. Backed by former team analyst and MIT-trained physicist Aaron Leanhardt, these bats have quickly become a hot topic around the league.
Bregman posted a picture of the AB2 Torpedo bat on his Instagram Story on Tuesday, punctuated with a rocket emoji.
Despite the growing hype, not everyone is on board with the Torpedo bat. Critics have voiced their concerns, and Milwaukee Brewers pitcher Trevor Megill, who witnessed the Yankees’ offensive surge firsthand, has been one of the most vocal opponents of its use.
“I think it’s terrible,” Megill told reporters over this past weekend, per the New York Post’s Dan Martin. “We’ll see what the data says. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I feel like it’s something used in slow-pitch softball. It’s genius: Put the mass all in one spot. It might be bush (league). It might not be. But it’s the Yankees, so they’ll let it slide.”
Even outspoken Red Sox fan Dave Portnoy might be at a loss for words after Bregman’s Instagram post. After all, he was one of the loudest critics when the Yankees first swung these custom bats.
“The Yankees hired an MIT physicist to basically take wood from the other part of the bat – near the handle and label and put it in the sweet spot – making the sweet spot bigger. They did this because Anthony Volpe sucks and he kept getting jammed and sawed off,” Portnoy posted on X on Sunday night.
“And they’re like, ‘how do we make him not suck. Let’s just make this bat called the torpedo bat, where basically if you swing and you make contact on the handle, get sawed off, it’s a home run.”
It remains to be seen whether MLB will continue to allow the use of Torpedo bats and if Bregman will step up to the plate with one in hand against the Baltimore Orioles on Wednesday evening.
