It started, like most good controversies in baseball, in a cage.
A lean, 21-year-old Triple-A slugger was taking hacks under flickering lights in a backfield in Arizona. In his hands was a bat unlike any his coach - or half the scouts there - had ever seen. Long and narrow. Almost awkwardly tapered. A torpedo. The swing didn’t look pretty. But the ball? It was screaming off the barrel.
A week later, videos of players using the now-infamous Torpedo Bat during offseason training leaked onto social media. The reactions were as predictable as a mound visit after a four-pitch walk. Baseball traditionalists clutched their pearls. “What happened to good ol’ wood?” one anonymous hitting coach texted a reporter. Others laughed. Some got curious.
But beneath the surface, the Torpedo Bat is more than a quirky tool in a viral training video. It’s a symbol of something much bigger: a philosophical fissure tearing through modern baseball. It’s not just about how players train, it’s about who’s training them, where the ideas are coming from, and how the definition of a “coach” has evolved in the data-driven age of sport.
Not Your Grandfather’s Bat - or Coach
Ten years ago, a hitting coach in MLB was likely a former big leaguer, someone with a sturdy handshake and war stories from the ‘98 postseason. Today? He might be a former biomedical engineer with a side hustle in biomechanical modeling.
Coaching has moved from anecdote to algorithm. Training isn’t just about reps anymore, it’s about force plates, ground reaction torque, and 4K motion capture systems that turn every swing into a 3D rendering of kinetic potential. And the rise of tools like the Torpedo Bat - a misfit-shaped training aid designed to exaggerate hand path and increase barrel awareness - illustrates how fringe ideas are making their way into big-league clubhouses.
“There’s a new breed of player who wants data, who wants to know the why behind the feel,” says J.D. Morgan, a private hitting specialist who now consults with multiple MLB organizations. “They don’t want to be told to ‘stay inside the ball.’ They want to know what their launch angle is, what their hip-shoulder separation looks like, what their force vector graph says.”
Morgan, notably, never played pro ball. He has a master’s degree in motor learning and once worked for a startup designing VR tools for tennis players. Five years ago, that résumé wouldn’t get him in the same zip code as an MLB clubhouse. Now, players are flying cross-country to train with him.
The Athlete as Entrepreneur
If coaching is evolving, so too is the athlete’s mindset.
Today’s young stars are building their own “teams”. Not just agents and trainers, but dietitians, mindset coaches, and skill specialists they’ve met through YouTube rabbit holes and late-night TikTok breakdowns. They’re sourcing information from outside the traditional feeder systems of amateur ball, and it's changing how, and with whom, they train.
Take 22-year-old outfielder Maya Reese, a former D1 softball phenom and now minor league standout in a major organization. She credits her power surge not to her team’s staff, but to a rotational movement coach she found on Instagram who specializes in disc golf mechanics.
“He saw something in my turn sequence that nobody else caught,” she says. “I wasn’t stacking well. We worked remotely, used slow-mo breakdowns, and within weeks I felt a difference.”
That coach? A former high school math teacher from Oregon.
Reese shrugs. “Good is good. I don’t care where the knowledge comes from.”
Old Guard Meets New Guard
Inside baseball, there’s both resistance and acceptance. Some coaches dismiss tools like the Torpedo Bat as gimmicks. Others quietly experiment with them on the side, especially when veteran players start asking questions.
“Players talk. They compare notes. If a guy hits three bombs after training with some ‘outsider,’ we’re gonna hear about it,” says one NL hitting coordinator.
But perhaps the real tension lies in identity. For decades, coaching was rooted in the idea of having been there. Now, players are finding value in those who haven’t - people who bring new frameworks, new science, and, yes, new bats.
“There’s a humility in this new model of coaching,” says Dr. Len Vargas, a sports scientist turned pitching strategist with a World Series ring. “It’s not about being the authority figure. It’s about being the interpreter. The translator between body and brain, between data and feel.”
The Future Is Already Here
And so we return to the cage, where innovation looks awkward, untraditional, and a little bit like cheating.
The Torpedo Bat is still polarizing. Some swear by it. Others scoff. But that’s not really the point. The point is that it exists - and it works for some. And in today’s hyper-competitive landscape, that’s all that matters.
Baseball is no longer about who has the most scouts or the best pipeline. It’s about who’s willing to break old molds. Who’s willing to ask: what if the best swing coach doesn’t have a single at-bat to his name?
In an era where the margin between Triple-A and The Show is thinner than ever, players aren’t waiting for approval anymore. They’re hunting for edges. Searching for that unfair advantage.
And if that means swinging a weird bat in a warehouse with a biomechanics nerd named Kyle? So be it.
They’re here to win.
And they don’t care who gets the credit.
