At Victus Sports in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, the phones have been blowing up since torpedo bats took the MLB and baseball world by storm last weekend.
The torpedo bats aren’t necessarily new, but the New York Yankees put them in the spotlight after smacking a franchise-record nine home runs in a game on Saturday against the Milwaukee Brewers.
What are torpedo bats?
The torpedo bats are modified for the hitter to bring more mass to the bat’s sweet spot and farther down from the barrel of the bat.
“The idea really is take the weight and the extra mass out from the area that you’re not performing in toward the end of the bat and kind of shifting it to where you want that performance area to be,” said Jared Smith, who is the chief brand officer of Victus Sports. “So some players make better contact or more consistent contact closer to their hands, so if we can move that mass a little closer to the hands it’s going to move that performance area or sweet spot a little closer to the hands also.”
One of those players was Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe, who was making contact near the label of the bat and not the barrel.
Aaron Leanhardt, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist, is the mastermind behind the torpedo bat. He’s now a coach with the Miami Marlins but introduced the bats to the Yankees last season.
Michelle Mengsu Chang 
The torpedo bats are legal within MLB rules, but not every player has decided to use them.
Smith said he’s not surprised the torpedo bats have now become popular, but he’s surprised by how aggressive the public and other MLB teams have been in getting their hands on the bats.
“It’s something we’ve been working on for a while,” Smith said. “We have a bat lab in Louisiana also that we’ve been testing things like this, alongside with the Yankees, [Baltimore] Orioles and other organizations that have been testing it.”
Victus launched its new torpedo bat online this week, and it became the most popular bat ever in the first 18 hours of it being available for purchase, Smith said.
Are Phillies players using torpedo bats?
Before the home opener at Citizens Bank Park against the Colorado Rockies on Monday, Smith said Victus dropped some new torpedo bats off to the Philadelphia Phillies.
One of those torpedo bats was used by third baseman Alec Bohm, who had a single in the 6-1 victory over the Rockies.
Smith said Phillies second baseman Bryson Stott also ordered six more torpedo bats in his colorway, so fans will likely see him using them as well.
Stott talked about the torpedo bats before Monday’s game against the Rockies and said they’re not ideal for every MLB player; it depends on their swing and where they make contact.
“It’s not one of those things you can call and say, ‘I want this torpedo,’ because it might not work for you,” Stott said. “If you hit it off the end of the torpedo bat, you’re in trouble, so it’s mostly where you hit it and where all their computers and things are telling you where you’re hitting it and things like that.”
