Demand for viral 'torpedo' baseball bats has sent a Pennsylvania factory into overdrive

KING OF PRUSSIA, Pa. (AP) — A 70-year-old man who plays in an area senior hardball league popped into Victus Sports this week because he needed bats for the new season. Plus he just had to take some cuts with baseball's latest fad and see for himself if there really was some wizardry in the wallop off a torpedo bat. Ed Costantini, of Newtown Square, picked up the custom-designed VOLPE11-TPD Pro Reserve Maple, and took his hacks just like MLB stars and Victus customers Anthony Volpe or Bryson Stott would inside the company's batting cage and tracked the ball's path on the virtual Citizens Bank Park on the computer screens. Most big leaguers use that often indistinguishable "feel" as a qualifier as to how they select a bat. Costantini had a similar process and thought the hype surrounding the torpedo since it exploded into the baseball consciousness over the weekend was a "hoax." But after dozens of swings in the cage, where he said the balance was better, the ball sounded more crisp off the bat, the left-handed hitter ordered on the spot four custom-crafted torpedo bats at $150 a pop. "The litmus test that I used was, I could see where the marks of the ball were," Costantini said. "The swings were hitting the thickness of the torpedo as opposed to the end of the bat." More than just All-Stars want a crack at the torpedo — a striking design in which wood is moved lower down the barrel after the label and shapes the end a little like a bowling pin — and Costantini's purchase highlighted the surge of interest in baseball's shiny new toy outside the majors. Think of home runs in baseball, and the fan's mind races to the mammoth distances a ball can fly when slugged right on the nose, or a history-making chase that captivates a nation. Of lesser interest, the ol' reliable wood bat itself. That was, of course, until Paul Goldschmidt and Cody Bellinger hit back-to-back homers for the New York Yankees last Saturday to open a nine-homer barrage. Victus Sports, known as much for their vibrant bats painted as pencils or the Phillie Phanatic dressed as a King's Guard, had three employees at the game and they started a text thread where they hinted to those back home that, perhaps more than home runs were taking off. Business was about to boom, too. Torpedo bats are driving an unprecedented surge in lumber curiosity Victus spent most of the last 14 years trying to help shape the future of baseball. The company's founders just never imagined that shape would resemble a bowling pin. "It was the most talked about thing about bats that we ever experienced," Victus co-founder Jared Smith said. Victus isn't the only company producing the bulgy bats, but they were among the first to list them for sale online after the Yankees' made them the talk of the sports world. The torpedo bat took the league by storm in only 24 hours, and days later, the calls and orders, and test drives -- from big leaguers to rec leaguers -- are humming inside the company's base, in a northwest suburb of Philadelphia. "The amount of steam that it's caught, this quickly, that's certainly surprising," Smith said. "If the Yankees hitting nine home runs in a game doesn't happen, this doesn't happen." Victus was stamped this season as the official bat of Major League Baseball and business was already good: Phillies slugger Bryce Harper is among the stars who stick their bats on highlight reels. But that torpedo-looking hunk of lumber? It generated about as much interest last season in baseball as a .200 hitter. Victus made its first torpedoes around 2024 spring training when the Yankees reached out about crafting samples for their players. Victus, as dialed-in as anyone in the bat game, only made about a dozen last season, and about a dozen more birch or maple bats this spring. This week alone, try hundreds of torpedoes. "Every two minutes, another one comes out of the machine," Smith said. Who knew there would be a baseball bat craze? On a good day, Victus makes 600-700 bats, but the influx of pro orders -- the company estimates at least half of every starting lineup uses Victus or Marucci bats -- has sent production into overdrive. The creation of a typical bat is usually a two-day process, but one can be turned around without a finish in about 20 minutes. Victus crafted rush-order bats Monday morning for a few interested Phillies and dashed to Citizens Bank Park for delivery moments before first pitch. All-Star third baseman Alec Bohm singled with one. Stott tested bats at the Marucci hit lab down in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, churning through styles until the company found the right fit. "They connect all these wires to you, and you swing 1,000 bats," Stott said. "And they kind of tell you where you're hitting the ball mostly." Rookie of the year? Here's the surprising part of the torpedo bat: For all its early hype, the bat is no rookie in the game. The lethal lumber has been used by some sluggers in baseball for at least a year or two only, well, no one really noticed. Giancarlo Stanton and Francisco Lindor used torpedoes last season. Other players experimented with it and no one — not the bulk of other players or journalists or fans — ever really picked up on the newfangled advance in hitting innovation. Smith said only "a few baseball junkies" inquired about the bats. "I think it's just one of those things that until you're looking for it, you might not see it," Smith said. "Now when you look at pictures, you're like, oh yeah, it's a torpedo." Aaron Leanhardt, a former Yankees front-office staffer who now works for the Miami Marlins, was credited as the one who developed the torpedo barrel to bring more mass to a bat's sweet spot. A member of Victus' parent company, Marucci Sports, worked with Leanhardt in a Louisiana branch of their hit lab last year to get the bat off the ground and into the hands of big leaguers. "I think getting past the shape being different was the hardest barrier," Smith said. "Then the team goes out and hits those home runs like they did and everyone is willing to try it." Before last weekend, Victus had no plans to mass produce the bat, making it only available to professionals. Now, Smith said, "I think it's our job to kind of educate the public in what's out there." The odd shape off the bat — like making a sausage, the meat is simply pushed down the casing — has little to no effect at Victus on the dynamics of making a baseball bat. The cost is the same as a standard bat, too, with a sticker price starting at around $200. Only the slogan is punched up: Get your hands on the most-talked about bat in the game. Does the torpedo bat work? There's not enough data yet to truly know how much oomph — or hits and homers — a torpedo bat may help some hitters. Cincinnati's Elly De La Cruz picked one up for the first time Monday and had a single, double and two home runs for a career-high seven RBIs. Not all hitters are believers —- or at least feel like they need to tinker with their lumber. Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, who hit an AL-record 62 homers in 2022 and 58 last year en route to his second AL MVP award, declined to try the new bat, asking, "Why try to change something?" Phillies All-Star shortstop Trea Turner said the hoopla was "blown out of proportion." "You've still got to hit the ball," Turner said. Turner, though, said he was open to trying the torpedo. "For bats to be the hot topic out in the zeitgeist is cool," Smith said. "It's kind of like our time to shine, in a way."