Welcome to Snyder’s Soapbox! Here, I pontificate about matters related to Major League Baseball on a weekly basis. Some of the topics will be pressing matters, some might seem insignificant in the grand scheme of things, and most will be somewhere in between. The good thing about this website is that it’s free, and you are allowed to click away. If you stay, you’ll get smarter, though. That’s a money-back guarantee. Let’s get to it.
Any time something in baseball changes, there’s initial outcry. I quite love it, because it shows that people still really care about baseball and also gives me the chance to mock the crybabies here on my trusty soapbox. And, hoo boy, did some people embarrass themselves the first few days of the 2025 Major League Baseball season regarding these new(ish) so-called torpedo bats.
He wasn’t necessary the worst respondent, but Brewers reliever Trevor Megill did not cover himself in glory with this gem after the Yankees blowout on the first Saturday of the season:
“I think it’s terrible. We’ll see what the data says. I’ve never seen anything like it before. I feel like it’s something used in slow-pitch softball. It’s genius: Put the mass all in one spot. It might be bush [league]. It might not be. But it’s the Yankees, so they’ll let it slide.”
To be clear, there is nothing about these bats illegal by letter of the law, nor were the bats new this year, NOR were they only being used by the Yankees. Several players used them last season and several players have already said they don’t like them. But some players do like them and, when Megill made the comments, the Yankees had just scored 20 runs against the Brewers.
Sounds a lot like sour grapes and sore loserdom, no?
Easy pickings for the soapbox.
I don’t need to dive further on that, though. I would like to point out that every word here from commissioner Rob Manfred is spot on:
“They’re absolutely good for baseball. I believe that issues like the torpedo bat and the debate around it demonstrate the fact that baseball still occupies a unique place in our culture, because people get into a complete frenzy over something that’s really nothing at the end of the day. The bats comply with the rules. Players have actually been moving the sweet spot around in bats for years. But it just demonstrates that something about the game is more important than is captured by television ratings or revenue or any of those things, when you have the discussions and debates about it.”
I don’t often back Manfred in his public comments, but this was just absolute perfection.
Let me latch onto where he said it’s good for baseball and take this point a bit further.
Suppose the bats do make the hitters better. Good!
The game has been seeing pitchers become more and more dominant in recent decades. I know that there’s a subsection of baseball fans out there who love to decry the “approach” from hitters these days and proclaim that the “problem” is all the hitters are trying to hit a home run every single time or just don’t care if they strikeout. It’s an insane line of argument, but it’s pretty prevalent.
The real answer is exactly what Kris Bryant told me back in 2021, which is that “major-league pitchers are just really, really, really good.”
The average velocity continues to skyrocket compared to the 1980s and even 1990s. The movement is sharper than ever and there’s so much more variety in the movement than there’s ever been before. Pitchers continue to innovate to the point that we hear words like sweeper and splunker and splinker and it’ll continue down that path. Splitters and changes are nastier than they’ve ever been. And, again, everything is faster. They still hit spots and change speeds, too.
Meanwhile, the mound hasn’t been moved back or down since well before I was born (and I’m not very young).
The batters moving the barrel isn’t a scandal. It’s an innovation not unlike pitchers toying with better ways to gain velocity and movement with pitches.
And, again, if these bats truly are a big advantage for the hitters, the game needs it.
Just look at what has happened to the league batting average.
1999: .271
2004: .266
2009: .262
2014: .251
2019: .252
2024: .243
And despite all the hand-wringing when it comes to these bats and the poor pitchers who are forced to deal with these monstrous, cheating hitters, the league average so far this season is .239.
Forgive me for not thinking an improvement with the piece of equipment in the hands of a batter is anything to worry about. In fact, with it being well within the already established rules, it’s something that should be embraced. I just wish it was even better in performance that it has been.
Rock on, hitters.
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