After homer barrage, Yankees address attention-drawing bats - ESPN

The new torpedo bats drew attention when the New York Yankees hit a team-record nine homers that traveled a combined 3,695 feet on Saturday.

Using a strikingly different model in which wood is moved lower down the barrel after the label and shapes the end a little like a bowling pin, Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger, Austin Wells, Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm Jr. homered in New York's 20-9 rout of the Milwaukee Brewers.

«That's just trying to be the best we can be,» manager Aaron Boone said Sunday. «That's one of the things that's gotten pointed out. I say to you guys all the time, we're trying to win on the margins, and that shows up in so many different ways.»

Major League Baseball has relatively uncomplicated bat rules, stating under Rule 3.02: «The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood.» It goes on to state there may be a cupped indentation up to 1¼ inches in depth, 2 inches wide and with at least a 1-inch diameter, and experimental models must be approved by MLB.

Former Yankees infielder Kevin Smith posted online Saturday that Aaron Leanhardt, a former Yankees front-office staffer who now works for the Miami Marlins, developed the torpedo barrel to bring more mass to a bat's sweet spot.

«You're going up with a weapon that can be better,» Smith wrote. «Your just misses could be clips, your clips could be flares, and your flares could [be] barrels. And it was true, it's fractions of an inch on the barrel differentiating these outcomes.»

Goldschmidt, batting leadoff for the first time, opened with a 413-foot homer off Nestor Cortes, and Bellinger followed with a 451-foot drive that