Baseball Bat Expert Sets Record Straight on Torpedo Bat 'Fallacy'

Keenan Long of LongBall Labs discusses torpedo bats. / Via MLB Network

Torpedo bats are all the rage in Major League Baseball these days, but one bat expert set the record straight on an idea that has been floating around since their introduction.

Keenan Long of LongBall Labs joined MLB Now on Thursday to discuss torpedo bats and the impact they're having on baseball. As part of the discussion, Long wanted to point out something people are getting wrong about bat structure.

Long noted that mass at the end of the bat beyond the barrel is not useless as some have claimed. Instead, that area plays a significant role in the quality of contact made on a given connection with the ball.

Long's full quote about what he deemed a "fallacy" is below:

I keep hearing this same fallacy being sort of shared widely... The fallacy that I'm hearing is that the mass at the end of the barrel is not productive in the collision with the ball and therefore the mass shouldn't be there. And that this universal claim that it's good to take away mass from the barrel end of the bat. So I want to be clear that that is not true in the physics. The physics of the bat-ball collision in that one millisecond when the bat and ball are touching is governed by the conservation of linear momentum and the mass at the end of the barrel contributes to that equation even more so than the mass [toward the handle].

His entire segment is below.

Will there be a day when hitters have a specialized bat for each pitcher?

Co-Founder and CEO of LongBall Labs Keenan Long joins #MLBNow to answer that question and more. pic.twitter.com/AMWGY12hxr

— MLB Now (@MLBNow) April 3, 2025

The New York Yankees made noise with their use of torpedo bats during opening weekend, as their offense exploded for 26 runs in a three-game series against the Milwaukee Brewers.

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