Trevor Megill calls Yankees’ Torpedo Bat ‘bush league’ and thinks the MLB let it slide because…well, it’s the Yankees

Trevor Megill is right – Look, I’m all for innovation in baseball — weighted balls, pitch clocks, openers, whatever helps evolve the game without turning it into a circus. But these torpedo bats the Yankees are swinging? Let’s call it what it is: Bush league nonsense disguised as science.

Saturday afternoon, the Yankees dropped nine home runs on the Brewers in a 20-9 track meet at Yankee Stadium. Aaron Judge hit three. Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Anthony Volpe each added one with the kind of bats that look more like a kid’s Wiffle Ball blaster than anything Babe Ruth would’ve dared bring to the plate.

MLB says Yankees’ new Torpedo Bats are legal and likely coming to a dugout near you but are we sure this is what we want?

And no, these aren’t “cool new custom bats.” These are engineered weapons built by a former MIT physicist — yes, MIT — to literally move the sweet spot closer to the hitter’s hands, putting more mass in the exact area where guys like Volpe and Jazz consistently make contact.

Is it smart? Sure. Is it legal? Apparently. Should it be? Absolutely not.

Enter Brewers closer Trevor Megill, who said what everyone else is thinking:

“I think it’s terrible. I feel like it’s something used in slo-pitch softball. It might be bush league. It might not be. But it’s the Yankees, so they’ll let it slide.”

• Trevor Megill

Trevor Megill 100% right.

Let’s be honest — if the A’s, Rays, or Guardians tried pulling this, we’d already have an emergency rules committee meeting and a league-wide bat inspection protocol. But because it’s the Yankees, baseball shrugs and pretends like this is all above board.

“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.”

Cool. So we’re good as long as it’s technically round? Great — next week we’ll see the Yankees roll out bats shaped like dumbbells. Why not? It’s all “legal.”

This isn’t innovation. It’s a loophole.

What’s next? Custom density zones in the barrel? Counterweighted grips for “balance”? Swing-tracking sensors built into the knob? At some point, you stop playing baseball and start playing TechBall™ presented by Elon Musk.

This is not the same as finding a new grip or tweaking a stance. This is altering the actual geometry of a bat to artificially improve barrel rates. It’s legal because MLB’s bat rule was written in a rotary phone era. And now the Yankees — with more money, more resources, and more leash than anyone — are pushing it until it snaps.

And once this genie’s out of the bottle?

Good luck. Every team will have a Lenny in the lab by next week. Every struggling hitter will demand a custom bat that matches their “contact map.” And pitchers? They’re just supposed to deal with it while they’re already navigating juiced balls, tiny strike zones, and a 15-second pitch clock.

You want to see a pitcher really lose it? Wait until someone with warning track power starts dropping bombs with a bat engineered like a Tesla chassis.

Let’s be clear:

If a piece of equipment fundamentally alters performance and creates an unfair competitive advantage, it shouldn’t be allowed. That’s why pine tar has limits. That’s why sticky stuff got banned. This is no different.

Call it what you want — a “torpedo,” a “contact maximizer,” or a “physics breakthrough” — but it doesn’t pass the eye test or the smell test. And if MLB wants to preserve even a shred of credibility, they better get ahead of this fast.

Because if these bats take over the league? You can kiss traditional baseball goodbye — and say hello to a glorified home run derby in disguise.

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