WEST SACRAMENTO, Calif. \u2014 Take a closer look at Cubs shortstop Dansby Swanson\u2019s game bat, and the curvature appears a little odd.<\/p>\n
While the bat he swung last season \u2014 and continues to use in batting practice \u2014 is more traditional in shape, this one tapers at the end.<\/p>\n
Swanson is among the growing legion of players who have adopted the torpedo bat, made famous last weekend by the Yankees.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018They\u2019ve obviously put a lot of work and research into it, and I think that what throws people off is it\u2019s not what a standard baseball bat for hundreds of years has looked like,\u2019\u2019 Swanson said in a conversation Monday with the Sun-Times. \u2018\u2018But it\u2019s just a different way of looking at it. I mean, it\u2019s pretty cool just to see people be innovative and trying to do whatever they can to be a good player and be a good team. There\u2019s nothing wrong with that.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
The bats are perfectly legal, falling within parameters that limit the diameter, length and size of the cupped indentation at the end of the bat.<\/p>\n
The bats became a hot-button topic because of a perfect storm. The prevalence of their use among the Yankees, large-market news generators, paired with the team\u2019s 15 home runs in three games lit and stoked the fire. Not to mention that the bats just look funny. And funny plays on social media.<\/p>\n
The attention also revealed the trend was neither new nor unique.<\/p>\n
The Cubs started the introduction process of reverse-tapered bats last season, making prototypes available for their hitters to see and try out. Then they had a more in-depth presentation during the offseason.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018Our baseball-sciences department did an awesome job of analyzing these and figuring out what the benefit could be,\u2019\u2019 hitting coach Dustin Kelly said before the Cubs\u2019 7-4 win Tuesday against the A\u2019s. \u2018\u2018It\u2019s always hard when you have major-leaguers that have been using the same bats for a long time. So we knew that it would need to be pretty buttoned up and make sure that we had all the right information and tested them and did a lot of the due diligence to put [the bats] in front of them.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
In addition to Swanson, second baseman Nico Hoerner has been swinging a torpedo bat in games. Left fielder Ian Happ swung one during the Tokyo Series. Others have tried them in batting practice.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018The Cubs have given me great data on where I\u2019ve hit the most balls on the bat and where I\u2019ve hit the most balls on the bat at productive angles,\u2019\u2019 Hoerner said, describing heat maps along the image of the barrel of a bat. \u2018\u2018You want to maximize where you are doing that most often. For me, there\u2019s stuff all over the barrel, but there is a little bit more on the side closer to the label than to the end, which isn\u2019t necessarily true for everybody.\u201d<\/p>\n
While torpedo bats are not for everyone, there might be advantages regardless of a hitter\u2019s most frequent contact point.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018The mass of the barrel being a little bit closer just weights it toward the hand a little more,\u2019\u2019 Kelly said. \u2018\u2018And what we\u2019re learning is every guy is different and everybody feels the bat different and the benefits for one guy are not going to be for the next.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Bats are already highly personalized. Major-leaguers work with their bat company of choice to design a tool to their own set of specifications, going beyond just length, width and type of wood.<\/p>\n
The emergence of this different shape opens another avenue to cater the bat to the player\u2019s swing.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It\u2019s optimizing where the sweet spot of the bat is,\u2019\u2019 Kelly said. \u2018\u2018We don\u2019t have a ton of data outside of what we\u2019ve used in the cage. So over the next year, once there\u2019s a lot more in-game data, you\u2019ll probably see a lot more people using them and trying to figure out what is the best use for them.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Swanson started toying around with a torpedo bat during the offseason. In the spring, he committed to using it once a game.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018I think the data is pretty helpful, that typically because of the way it\u2019s shaped and where the mass is at on the bat, it helps you hit the ball just a little bit harder,\u2019\u2019 Swanson said. \u2018\u2018The harder you hit it, typically, the better chance you have of getting a base hit. So that, I think, actually means something.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner are among the Cubs who have used the reverse-tapered bats in games.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":46148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-mlb"],"yoast_head":"\n