Torpedo bat craze: Inside a Quebec factory churning out baseball's newest trend

Rachel Watts · CBC News

· Posted: Apr 06, 2025 4:00 AM EDT | Last Updated: 11 minutes ago

Batmaker Manuel Bouffard is engaged sanding and sawing successful Quebec City's B45 Baseball factory, trying to support up with the request for the sport's latest fad.

Standing implicit a instrumentality that carves shot bats from woody cylinders successful conscionable 2 and a fractional minutes, Bouffard is making galore much torpedo bats of late.

Unlike a regular bat, the torpedo was designed by a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) physicist to bring the astir magnitude of wood oregon wide to the portion of the bat wherever interaction astir often happens.

"It's a large happening close now," said Bouffard. "It's caller stuff, truthful evidently radical privation to effort it."

While respective manufacturers marque the bat, B45 Baseball has been making torpedoes for astir a year. In the past week, request has surged.

It's owed successful part to Major League Baseball's opening weekend, erstwhile the New York Yankees clubbed a grounds fig of location runs — and galore players utilized the torpedo bat.

The bat itself doesn't mean players volition summation their fig of location runs, but it's decidedly a instrumentality immoderate are utilizing to effort to level up their performance, says Marie-Pier Gosselin, B45 Baseball wide manager.

"It truly caught the attraction of the public," she said.

"As of past Saturday, request for torpedoes was zero. And present that's fundamentally each the requests we've been getting."

It's 25 times much than what the institution would usually expect, she says. Just this week, they received involvement from astir 30 MLB players who privation to effort them.

Davis Schneider, with the Toronto Blue Jays, already uses the bat, and Gosselin says helium has different bid connected the way.

"That's benignant of the crushed wherefore it brought a spot much attraction to us," she said.

"It's a tiny plant, it's a tiny team, truthful we're a small tired. We didn't expect that for sure, but it's exciting."

Assistant wide manager Olivier Lepine doesn't cognize however agelong the inclination volition last.

"If radical similar it, they similar the feeling of it and they consciousness similar they tin deed the shot harder and much often, the torpedo bat volition instrumentality for a agelong time," helium said.

The bat is ineligible successful the MLB, says Lepine, contempt immoderate alleging the innovation should not beryllium used.

Rules stipulate the bat indispensable beryllium made from 1 portion of wood and cannot beryllium much than 2.61 inches successful diameter and 42 inches successful length.

Although determination has been immoderate alteration to bats erstwhile it comes to its knob, Lepine says the torpedo is 1 of the archetypal times he's seen specified a alteration to the barrel.

"I don't deliberation this bat tin acceptable for everybody," helium said.

"The equilibrium is not the same. Instead of having astir of the value towards the end, you got the value person to your hand."

While immoderate accidental the torpedo makes for a faster swing, he's hesitant to regularisation the bat arsenic a gamechanger.

"I request to spot much results earlier saying that it's truthful overmuch amended than a mean bat," said Lepine.

"I conjecture clip volition tell."