“How do ‘torpedo bats’ work? We asked baseball physicists to explain”—NPR Article

Journalist Bill Chappell interviewed Dr. Lloyd Smith for this April 2025 NPR article.

But the torpedo design doesn’t necessarily translate to more power at the plate.

“If you lower the swing weight, you increase your swing speed,” which is “super important for batted ball speed” and hitting the ball farther, Smith says. The tradeoff, he adds, is that by lowering a bat’s swing weight, “you swing the bat faster, but you have less mass to hit the ball with.”

Bill Chappell, “How do ‘torpedo bats’ work? We asked baseball physicists to explain”, April 2, 2022, NPR