Should Jason Heyward Jump on the Torpedo Bat Bandwagon?

[Randy Holt]

Heyward's struggles at the plate and his batted ball profile seem like they'd make him a good fit for the new fad.

I don't know if you know this, but baseball players are inherently followers. What works for one guy, might not work for another. But you can be darn sure they're going to try that thing that works for that other guy just in case. Which is why it's no surprise that seemingly overnight, the torpedo bat has taken over Major League Baseball.

The new-look bat, marked by its bowling pin-like shape, shifts the distribution of the wood within the bat in order to generate more quality contact a little lower down the barrel. It's an area more frequently used by hitters, with those utilizing it at this point hoping to get some stronger gains out of the type of contact they're making. It's been likened to a golfer getting a club fitting, with the new shape not necessarily likely to work for everyone. But given what the Yankees did to the Milwaukee Brewers' staff over the weekend (to say nothing of Elly De La Cruz's two-homer night using it on Monday), the attention is there.

At this point, we know it's not entirely new. Former New York Yankees assistant hitting coordinator (and current field coordinator of the Miami Marlins) Aaron Leanhardt is the bulk of the brains behind the new stick, which has designs going back a couple of years. Teams, including the Yankees, Chicago Cubs, and Tampa Bay Rays were doing the research on the impact of the bat before this season. So it makes sense that of the 16 hitters reported to be using the torpedo bat at this time, half of them come from those three teams (and five of them from the Yankees). 

Given that the realm of sports discussion is, in itself, driven by following the ideas of others, we're likely to continue to hear about the bat's presence quite regularly in the coming months. Especially if a polarizing team like the Yankees continues to slug home runs against pitching staffs held together by duct tape and paper clips. But should the torpedo make its way to San Diego in the near future, the Padres appear to feature the perfect candidate for such a tool. 

Jason Heyward has long been a frustrating offensive presence to watch. As much as he brings to a team in the defense and intangibles departments, the hitting hasn't been there in a legitimate decade. With the exception of the shortened 2020 and 2023, when he parlayed a minor league deal into a platoon role with the Dodgers, the last above-average season he posted (by wRC+) came with St. Louis back in 2015 (121).

There have been various adjustments and retools on the mechanical side, but the swing ultimately produces the same results: plenty of contact, but a lot of it soft and on the ground. Since 2016, Heyward's 81.5% contact rate ranks 120th out of 529 qualified position players. His 49.6% groundball rate ranks 122nd. One of those things is a problem. One of them is not. I'll let you sort which is which. 

Despite the contact volume, Heyward has not been remotely adept at creating quality contact. There have been some years where he finishes in a reasonable percentile in the hard-hit game (including a 60th percentile finish in 2021 courtesy of a 42.4% hard-hit rate), but barrels have been a particularly difficult puzzle for Heyward to solve. He finished 47th percentile in barrel rate (8.1%) in 2023, but has never been above the 29th in any of the other years throughout the decade. The lack of quality contact comes despite impressive bat speed figures over the course of the last two seasons: 

Heyward's average bat speed checks in around what is considered a fast swing. One imagines that you'd experience at least some degree of higher quality of contact when you're getting the bat through the zone at the pace at which Heyward clearly is. 

At the same time, his ideal point of contact leaves something to be desired: 

The point of contact being almost squarely above the plate is suboptimal. The swing speed helps him to compensate for seemingly late reactions and leads to heavy pull rates (a 50.7% pull rate in the last four seasons alone). Even with his positioning in the back-middle of the box, he's late to the ball and unable to find the barrel with one of the longer average swings among any hitter (he's averaged 8.3 ft against Giancarlo Stanton's league-leading 8.5). The positioning and the bat speed should be ideal. Instead, he's just an apparently late swinger and the barrel almost never has a chance to find the baseball. 

Which is why he makes so much sense as a torpedo bat candidate. It's not a thing that's going to work for everyone. But it's been especially effective for those who find themselves contacting the ball a little closer to the handle. As Heyward has aged, this has become an increasingly obvious issue within his game. 

Given the unique blend of approach and contact ability, this is a tool that should fall directly into his wheelhouse. I don't imagine it'll be too long before the torpedo bat starts spreading throughout the western region. And once it's in the Padres clubhouse, I'd be a bit surprised if he wasn't among the first to take a swing.

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