The biggest story of the baseball season is ... the bat?

We are three weeks into the Major League Baseball season and one of the main story lines of the nascent season is the bats.

On the second day of the season, the New York Yankees hit 9 home runs against the Milwaukee Brewers. Many of the Yankees players were using a new type of bat – shaped kind of like a bowling pin. This bat bulges at the center and narrows at the end. It’s called a torpedo bat. 

Of course, traditionalists don’t love the new bat (let’s be real, some people hate change). But Major League Baseball says the bats do meet regulations … which say bats must 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.”

How does the torpedo bat work? Fortunately for us, there is a wealth of baseball knowledge in our own backyard to answer that question.

The Sports Science Laboratory at Washington State University "specializes in the dynamics of bat and ball collisions."

Guest:

Lloyd Smith, Professor of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Sports Science Laboratory

Links: 

NPR: How do 'torpedo bats' work? We asked baseball physicists to explain

Thank you to the supporters of KUOW, you help make this show possible! If you want to help out, go to kuow.org/donate/soundsidenotes

Soundside is a production of KUOW in Seattle, a proud member of the NPR Network.