Torpedo Bat Player Testing: Case Studies From the Best Real-World Data We Have
The most rigorous torpedo bat performance data comes from physics simulations and lab barrel maps. But those sources test a bat, not a player — they cannot capture how a real hitter integrates a new bat design into real at-bats against real pitching, under real pressure, with a swing profile grooved over years of development.
Player testing data fills that gap. It is messier than laboratory data — full of confounders, small samples, and context effects that are impossible to fully separate. But it is the only data that answers the question players and coaches actually ask: did real hitters, in real games, perform better with a torpedo bat? The answer varies by player — and understanding why requires going case by case.
The most valuable case study in the entire torpedo bat player dataset is not Opening Day 2025 or the Yankees' nine-homer game. It is a rookie shortstop in Chicago named Colson Montgomery, who broke his torpedo bat mid-game, was forced to use a traditional bat, and found he could tell the difference by feel — before the Statcast data confirmed it.
Player Case Study Overview
| Player | Case Type | Primary Result | Secondary Result | Key Insight |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Colson Montgomery | Natural experiment | 21 HR in 71 MLB games | 452-ft HR; 114 mph EV | Broke torpedo mid-game, traditional 'didn't feel right', new torpedo arrived, 452-ft HR. Clearest before/after in the dataset. |
| Anthony Volpe | Best case Yankee | EV +3.3 mph; hard-hit 35%→48% | Bat speed +3.0 mph | Largest EV gain. Hard-hit rate surge into .490 MLB BA zone. Perfect contact zone alignment. |
| Paul Goldschmidt | Contact quality case | EV -0.4 mph (flat) | BA +94 pts (.245→.339) | EV didn't rise, BA did. The clearest proof that collision quality can improve without a raw power gain. |
| Giancarlo Stanton | Hidden adopter | 7 HR in 14 postseason games | 99th pct EV already | Used torpedo secretly in 2024 playoffs. Elite EV hitter — only contact alignment could explain the choice. |
| Elly De La Cruz | Single-game debut | 5 hard-hit balls (4x 100+ mph) | 2 HR; 11 total bases | First game ever with torpedo bat. Extraordinary debut — single-game caution applies. |
| Davis Schneider | HR rate spike | HR/AB +136.3% | SLG significantly up | Largest HR/AB gain in 18-player study. Power hitter whose contact zone aligned precisely with design. |
| Jazz Chisholm Jr. | Confidence + park | EV +1.2 mph; bat speed +1.1 | LA elevated post-trade | Torpedo + Yankee Stadium porch + confidence effect. Hardest to isolate bat from context. |
Case Study 1: Colson Montgomery — The Closest Thing to a Controlled Experiment
The Colson Montgomery torpedo bat story is the most analytically valuable player case in the entire 2025 dataset — not because of its statistical magnitude, but because it contains an accidental control condition: a game where he was forced to switch from a torpedo to a traditional bat mid-sequence, giving observers a before/after within the same player at the same point in the season.
The Full Arc
Montgomery entered 2025 struggling at Triple-A Charlotte — batting .149 with an OPS of .479 in 94 at-bats and 43 strikeouts. When called up on July 4, 2025, scouts had downgraded their view of his barrel precision. He used a traditional bat for his first 14 games: BA .262, 6 RBI, a double and a triple — but zero home runs. The team's research showed what Statcast confirmed: Montgomery was making contact at the label zone, not at the barrel tip. The torpedo design matched his contact zone exactly.
In Tampa on July 22, hitting director Ryan Fuller put a torpedo in his hands. In his very first game using it, he hit his first MLB home run. Over the next 8 games he hit 5 home runs and slugged .750.
| Phase | Period | Bat | Results | Detail |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Triple-A struggles | Spring 2025 | Traditional | OPS .479; BA .149 in 94 AB | 43 strikeouts; scouts downgraded barrel precision |
| MLB debut | July 4-17 | Traditional | BA .262; 0 HR in 14 games | Acceptable debut but team needed power — no home runs |
| Torpedo switch | July 22 (Tampa) | Torpedo | 1 HR in 1st game; 5 HR in 8 games | Research showed he was hitting off the label. SLG .750 in 8-game torpedo window. |
| Broke torpedo | Aug. 1 (Anaheim) | Traditional (forced) | HR Aug. 3 but 'didn't feel right' | "Too much weight at the end. Made me out and around and pull-happy." — Montgomery |
| New torpedos arrive | Aug. 10 | Torpedo (new batch) | 452-ft HR; 114 mph EV | First AB with new batch. Longest HR at Rate Field 2025. Longest lefty White Sox rookie HR in Statcast era. |
| Full second-half | July–Sept 2025 | Torpedo | 21 HR in 71 games; 3.3 bWAR | Avg bat speed 76.9 mph (top 5 MLB). .290 ISO. |
The Natural Experiment: When the Torpedo Broke
On August 1 in Anaheim, Montgomery broke his torpedo bat in his second at-bat. Forced to finish with a traditional bat, he hit a home run on August 3 — but reported exactly what the physics would predict: "When I had to use a normal bat, I felt like there was too much weight at the end. It kind of made me out and around and pull-happy, I guess."
This is a player describing the precise mechanical consequence the torpedo's lower MOI is designed to prevent. Excess distal mass pulling his swing path outward — the opposite of the compact path his coaches identified as the key improvement lever. He was not imagining the difference. He was feeling the MOI.
New torpedos arrived August 10. Montgomery's first at-bat with the new batch: a 452-foot home run at 114 mph exit velocity — the longest home run at Rate Field in 2025 and the longest by a left-handed hitting White Sox rookie in the Statcast era.
Montgomery finished his 2025 rookie season with 21 home runs in 71 MLB games — projecting to 48 HR over a full season — along with a .290 ISO and 3.3 bWAR. His average bat speed of 76.9 mph ranked fifth in MLB among qualified hitters. The torpedo bat did not make him a hitter. But it removed the mechanical drag preventing the hitter he already was from showing up consistently.
Case Study 2: Anthony Volpe — The Contact Zone Alignment Blueprint
Anthony Volpe is the most data-rich torpedo bat success case in 2025 — and the case that Aaron Leanhardt's data pipeline was most explicitly designed to produce. The research behind Volpe's bat was not guesswork: Statcast contact zone tracking confirmed that Volpe made his best contact not at the barrel tip, but at the label zone 6–8 inches from the end. Leanhardt built the torpedo to match that zone exactly.
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 | Change | Significance |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avg bat speed | ~71 mph | ~74 mph | +3.0 mph | MOI reduction — primary driver |
| Avg exit velocity | 86.2 mph | 89.5 mph | +3.3 mph | Contact zone EV stacking on bat speed |
| Hard-hit rate (95+ mph) | 35% | 48% | +13 pct pts | MLB BA at 95+ mph = .490 vs .218 |
| xwOBA | Below average | Significantly improved | Large gain | Expected outcome quality |
| Contact zone profile | Modal contact ~7" from tip | Same — consistent | Match confirmed | Leanhardt built the bat for this exact zone |
The hard-hit rate figure is the headline. Going from 35% to 48% means 13 more at-bats out of every 100 now produce 95+ mph contact — the threshold above which MLB batting average is .490, compared to .218 below it. That is not a minor statistical improvement. It is a fundamental transformation of Volpe's contact quality profile.
The JMP statistical analysis confirmed Volpe's case as the clearest example of contact zone alignment working as designed. His launch speed distribution shifted upward from 2024 to 2025 in a way that was systematic, not random — indicating improved contact quality rather than luck or sample variation.
Case Study 3: Paul Goldschmidt — When EV Doesn't Tell the Full Story
The Goldschmidt case is the most analytically instructive in the entire player testing dataset — not because it shows the torpedo bat's best performance, but because it reveals a mechanism that exit velocity data alone would miss entirely.
Goldschmidt's average exit velocity declined by 0.4 mph with the torpedo bat in 2025. His bat speed gain was minimal: +0.3 mph. On raw output metrics, the torpedo bat appeared to deliver nothing for Goldschmidt. But his batting average increased by 94 points — from .245 to .339.
| Metric | 2024 | 2025 | Direction | What It Tells Us |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Avg exit velocity | 91.4 mph | 91.0 mph | -0.4 mph | EV did NOT improve — bat speed gain minimal (+0.3 mph) |
| Batting average | .245 | .339 | +94 points | Contact quality is the gain, not raw power |
| Bat speed gain | ~73 mph | ~73.3 mph | +0.3 mph (minimal) | Already elite bat speed — little room for MOI gain |
| Implication | — | — | — | Torpedo moved contact quality, not power. More at-bats with high-efficiency contact = higher BA without EV gain. |
What explains this? The torpedo bat moved his contact quality without moving his raw exit velocity. As a veteran with elite bat speed already at 91+ mph average EV, the MOI reduction offered minimal marginal benefit — he was already near the upper end of efficient bat acceleration. What the torpedo did was align his contact zone more precisely with the peak mass location, converting more of his typical at-bats into high-efficiency collisions that produced better-located hits rather than harder ones.
This is Lloyd Smith's 'accuracy not power' thesis in its purest form. The torpedo bat made Goldschmidt a more accurate hitter, not a more powerful one. His 94-point BA gain is the clearest available evidence that the torpedo bat's contact quality improvement is real and measurable, independent of the exit velocity story.
Case Study 4: Giancarlo Stanton — The Hidden Adopter
The torpedo bat's highest-profile player testing story was hiding in plain sight during the 2024 MLB postseason. Giancarlo Stanton, who has posted a 99th percentile Statcast average exit velocity in five of his past seven qualified seasons, used a torpedo bat for large portions of 2024 — without anyone initially drawing attention to it. He hit 7 home runs in 14 postseason games.
The standard small-sample caveat applies. But the fact that baseball's most powerful hitter — a player for whom the bat speed MOI benefit would be minimal at already-elite swing speeds — chose to use a torpedo bat suggests the contact zone alignment benefit was the appeal. For a hitter who already generates elite exit velocity, the torpedo's value would come entirely from improving the consistency of best-contact events, not from swinging faster.
Stanton's adoption is the most credible possible endorsement of the torpedo bat's contact quality mechanism. He has nothing to gain from the MOI-driven bat speed boost — his swing is already maxed out. If it helps him, it must be through contact zone mass alignment.
Case Study 5: Elly De La Cruz — The Single-Game Debut
The day after Opening Day 2025's nine-homer Yankee game, Elly De La Cruz picked up a torpedo bat for the first time. In that single game: 5 hard-hit balls, 4 of them at 100+ mph by Statcast, 2 home runs, and 11 total bases.
The single-game caveat applies fully. One game cannot establish whether the torpedo bat is responsible — De La Cruz has genuine elite power with traditional bats, and a single hot game could happen with any equipment. What makes the De La Cruz case worth noting is its pattern-consistency with the broader dataset: a player with above-average contact at the label zone, picking up a torpedo bat, and immediately producing hard-hit contact at an extraordinary rate. Whether that holds over a full season is the question the data has not yet answered.
The JMP Statistical Analysis: What the Data Science Shows
Beyond individual case studies, the JMP statistical analysis presented at the 2025 US conference provided the most rigorous multivariate examination of torpedo bat player data available. Using Statcast launch speed distributions and a player-level model, researchers examined who benefited and by how much.
- Contact zone targeting is decisive: Players whose contact zone matched the torpedo's peak mass location showed systematic launch speed improvement. Those without this alignment showed no improvement or declined — consistent with the 39% EV decline rate in the 18-player Statcast study.
- Montgomery as a study case: The JMP presentation specifically highlighted Montgomery's arc — noting that articles about his torpedo adoption prompted researchers to model his performance as a natural experiment, with his before/after providing a near-controlled comparison.
- Volpe's shadowgram: The launch speed distribution visualization for Volpe showed a clear rightward shift (more batted balls at higher velocities) from 2024 to 2025 — systematic improvement, not random variation.
- Individual specificity confirmed: The study concluded that contact zone data should inform which players receive torpedo bats. The benefit is not a team-wide upgrade — it is a precision match between player contact pattern and bat design.
The JMP analysis finding: torpedo bat benefits are highly player-specific. The data does not support a blanket recommendation — it supports a data-driven matching process where contact zone location determines who benefits from the torpedo design.
Frequently Asked Questions: Torpedo Bat Player Testing
Because Montgomery's 2025 season contains an accidental controlled condition. He used a traditional bat for 14 games (0 HR), switched to a torpedo and hit 5 HR in 8 games, then broke the torpedo and was forced back to a traditional bat — which he described by feel as worse before Statcast could confirm it. When new torpedos arrived, his first at-bat produced a 452-foot, 114 mph home run. The team's Statcast contact zone data that preceded his switch — showing he was hitting at the label zone — makes the before/after analytically clean. No other player in the 2025 dataset has an involuntary mid-season bat switch allowing this level of comparison.
The torpedo bat has two distinct performance mechanisms: bat speed improvement from lower MOI, and contact quality improvement from mass concentration at the contact zone. Goldschmidt, with already-elite bat speed at 91+ mph average EV, saw minimal gain from the first mechanism. But the second mechanism — better contact zone alignment — improved the efficiency of his typical contact events, producing more hits on balls he was already making contact with. His 94-point BA gain is the clearest available evidence that contact quality improvement is a real, measurable benefit separate from the raw exit velocity story.
Stanton's adoption is analytically important precisely because he has nothing to gain from the MOI-driven bat speed benefit — his swing is already at 99th percentile exit velocity. If the torpedo bat helped him, the mechanism had to be contact zone mass alignment rather than swing speed. His 7 postseason home runs in 2024 while secretly using a torpedo add directional credibility to the contact quality mechanism for already-elite-power hitters. The choice itself — baseball's most powerful hitter choosing a torpedo bat — is the most credible endorsement the contact quality case could receive.
The JMP analysis of Statcast data found that torpedo bat benefits are highly player-specific and not uniformly distributed. Players whose contact zone matched the torpedo's peak mass location showed systematic improvement in launch speed distribution. Players without this alignment showed no improvement or declined. Montgomery's arc was specifically used as a case study illustrating how the bat affects players differently. The study concluded that contact zone data should inform which players receive torpedo bats — the design requires precise matching between player contact pattern and bat geometry to deliver its performance benefit.
Yes. Players who frequently make contact toward the barrel tip — those who often battle inside pitches, get jammed, or fight off fastballs at the end of the bat — will contact the torpedo's weaker tip zone more often than its peak mass zone. For these hitters the design works against their contact pattern. Players mid-swing-adjustment or who prefer traditional weight distribution feel may also not benefit, or may need adaptation time. The JMP analysis and the 18-player Statcast study both confirmed that roughly 39% of users saw EV decline, consistent with contact zone mismatch as the primary explanation.