Orioles Batting Coach Says Yankees’ Torpedo Bats 'Next Progression of Hitting'

The hitting coach for the Baltimore Orioles talked like a coach that wasn’t surprised by the New York Yankees’ new bats.

Mar 30, 2025; Toronto, Ontario, CAN; Baltimore Orioles designated hitter Ryan O'Hearn (32) hits a single against the Toronto Blue Jays during the first inning at Rogers Centre. | John E. Sokolowski-Imagn Images

The New York Yankees’ torpedo bats set baseball on fire over the weekend, and it wasn’t jus the Milwaukee Brewers that felt the force of those new bats.  

The Brewers ended up being swept by the Yankees, in part due to a nine home-run game by the Yankees on Saturday.

The bats used by players like Jazz Chisholm, Cody Bellinger and Anthony Volpe became the talk of the weekend.

The bats are legal and conform with Major League Baseball rules. The significant change from the traditional bats are that the barrel rests in a non-traditional location, which is to the hitter’s hands.

With the movement of that barrel, it gives the bat a torpedo-like look to it. These types of bats are used at other levels of baseball, but they’ve never seen this much use in the Majors. A former Yankees analyst and MIT graduate, Aaron Leanhardt, helped them make the switch.

Naturally, the bats are the talk of baseball and Baltimore Orioles hitting coach Cody Asche was asked about them before Sunday’s game with the Toronto Blue Jays.

Guess what? Those bats aren’t exactly a secret.

“We have some guys that have dabbled with them,” Asche said to reporters, including the Baltimore Sun.

Asche played five seasons in the Majors as an infielder and outfielder before he made the transition to coaching. He spent 2021 as the hitting coach for the Philadelphia Phillies’ Class-A affiliate in Clearwater before joining the Orioles organization in 2022 as an upper-level hitting instructor.

Then, in 2023, he joined the Major League staff as an offensive strategy coach before becoming the hitting coach this season.

The lifetime .234 hitter might have wanted one of those bats back in the day.

“It’s pretty good business there, right?” he said. “Put more mass there in the sweet spot.”

Asche didn’t sound particularly surprised by the development. As someone who talks to other hitting coaches, he doesn’t believe the bats are unique to the Yankees. They’re just the team using them and having success with them.

He believes, as with the Orioles, that every team in the game has one or two players that are considering using them. What happened this weekend, to him, will simply light a fire under other hitters to give the bats a shot.

“It’s the next progression of hitting, finding out where you can hit the ball on the sweep spot, putting more mass there without changing too many things,” he said.