Torpedo Time

BY KEVIN KERNAN

The first word today goes to Admiral David Farragut, yes, he was a Yankee, who said these memorable words in the Battle of Mobile Bay during the Civil War.

“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.’’

Let me add: “Damn Yankees.’’

Yes, there is a lot of anti-Yankee whining around baseball already.

The talk of baseball to open the 2025 MLB season has been the use of the Torpedo Bats by the Yankees as they bludgeoned the Brewers pitching staff in a three-game sweep at Yankee Stadium, scoring 36 runs and rocketing 15 home runs; not all were hit with Torpedo Bats.

Evidently no one really noticed the bats in spring training, so the Torpedo Bats are a hot topic now. At least five Yankees use the Torpedo Bat, which basically has more mass around the label. On Saturday Michael Kay let the cat out of the bag, good for him, or should I say, Kay yelled “fire the torpedoes,’’ during the broadcast when the Yankees humiliated the Brewers, 20-9.

Two straight games the Brewers used position player Jake Bauers to pitch, and he somehow has a 0.00 ERA over two innings – and he homered earlier in the game on Sunday, while the Brewers starter Aaron Civale posts a 15.00 ERA and Saturday’s starter (Not) Nasty Cortes posts a 36.00 ERA, keeping up his fine work from the World Series with the Yankees.

Somehow Freddie Freeman hit a grand slam off Nestor even though he doesn’t use a Torpedo Bat. And, by the way, over their last six games against the Brewers the Yankees have scored 72 runs and blasted 25 home runs, so this is not just a torpedo attack.

It’s full speed ahead for the Yankees offense but it must be noted the Brewers pitching is dreadful. How dreadful? They are the first Major League team to allow 15 home runs over the first three games of the season since 1901.

Mighty Aaron Judge is hitting .545 over the three games with four home runs, 11 RBIs, and a 2.461 OPS, all while using a traditional bat. Don’t mess with success.

Jazz Chisholm is using the TB and is batting .417 with a 1.667 OPS and three home runs. He hit two home runs on Sunday. Judge blasted three on Saturday and then homered his first at-bat on Sunday, so the Brewers eventually started walking Judge and Jazz picked up the slack from there.

After the game Jazz told Meredith Marakovits on YES, “I think we came back this year with something to prove and I think we’re all fighting for it. We want to win a World Series. We got so close last year, and we can just taste it… We are coming to put it on you and not stop. Every time.’’

Admiral Farragut would approve.

Just to be clear because who really knows American history anymore, torpedoes in the Admiral’s Day were mines in the water and after one of his ships was hit by a Confederate mine, the admiral offered his famous command to keep going.

It’s full speed ahead for the Yankees offense but it must be noted the Brewers pitching is dreadful. How dreadful? They are the first Major League team to allow 15 home runs over the first three games of the season since 1901. Geez, I thought that was the Dead Ball Era. Chisholm, Volpe, Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger and Austin Wells are Yankee starters who use the Torpedo Bats. Bellinger used one in batting practice with the Cubs last season, but evidently no one in Chicago noticed.

The bats are more balanced from end to end, they say, but so was the Jackie Robinson model bat I remember from my days at David Brearley Regional High School.

It also should be noted that the Twins’ Ryan Jeffers is using a Torpedo Bat. His Twins lost all three opening games to the Cardinals and Jeffers is batting .125.

I would imagine with the Torpedo Bat getting more notoriety pitching analytics will try to come up with a way to counteract the advantages of the bat, perhaps more fastballs away and not the middle-middle fastballs Brewers pitchers were throwing or maybe even more changeups.

Things have gotten a little crazy already in the instant analysis, hot take world we live in, and some are calling for the banning of the Yankees Torpedo Bats, which is flat out ridiculous.

Pitch better, 90-mph straight as an arrow cutters in the middle of the plate tend to get hammered. The wonderfully opinionated Red Sox fan Dave Portnoy is one of those calling for a ban. He should worry about his pizza reviews and his beloved Red Sox unhappy designated hitter Rafael Devers.

Portnoy’s Red Sox lost three straight after winning on Opening Day against the Rangers. Devers is 0-for-16 with 12 strikeouts. He is not happy he lost his third base job to newly signed free agent Alex Bregman and Devers also is carrying extra weight. Bregman does not have the best body language going either. Devers is coming off shoulder issues, is getting beat by mediocre fastballs and is a complete mess right now. First baseman Triston Casas who came to Devers’ defense in spring training is 1-for-16 with seven strikeouts.

For Portnoy and all Red Sox fans with high hopes, the opening of the 2025 season could not have gone worse with the Yankees barrage of success and the Red Sox clutch-hitting failures. But this is just the start, I do like though where the Yankees heads are at after being swamped by the Dodgers in the World Series. There is no hangover. They came out of spring training united, where the Red Sox came out of Fort Myers discombobulated, not only because of the way Devers lost his job – and his pouting over losing his job–  but also because of the Jim Rice Incident, which I wrote about here at BallNine. Rice was basically told by a Red Sox uniformed Nerd that his line drive approach to hitting is not what the Red Sox want, they want to lift the ball in the air.

Line drives are so old school.

With that in mind and knowing a good story when I see one after being in this business since 1977, I turned on the NESN postgame show Sunday where Rice discussed the Red Sox non-hitting start to the season. They were 6-for-41 against the Rangers pitchers with runners in scoring position, with way too many strikeouts.

Rice, as I expected, seized the moment.

Don’t mess with the men of that era.

In the Saturday and Sunday losses the Red Sox were 1-for-24 with runners in scoring position.

When it was suggested that Red Sox hitters need to cut down their swings, Rice glared and said, “How can you cut down your swing when you are trying to get the ball in the air. When you try to get the ball in the air your swing is long … you are not thinking about putting the ball in play, you are thinking about putting the ball in the air … The swings are too big.’’

Hey, what does Jim Rice know? He is only a Hall of Fame hitter, the Red Sox employ at least nine experts who came over from Driveline, not Line Driveline, Driveline, so that is the information that is being used by Red Sox hitters even though one unnamed young Red Sox hitter quietly asked for Rice’s advice in the indoor batting cage in spring training when Rice was told in so many words to get lost by a Nerd who came over from his monitor station.

As for Devers being late on his swing, Rice noted, “The swing is late because the swing is too big.’’

Exactly.

I’m with Jim Rice on all this; in case you were wondering.

Both Rice and ex-closer Jonathan Papelbon both made note of Devers being heavy as well, so there is that too. Scouts told me the same thing during spring training.

Also, and this is huge, you must have the right mindset to be a designated hitter. You basically have to not want to play the field and just focus on hitting and find a way to be ready and keep your mind and your body loose. There is an art to it. That is difficult for so many players that I have talked to through the decades because they feel they are not baseball players if they are not playing the field. Devers has been a third baseman; he can’t just suddenly turn on the switch to be a DH. As for Portnoy, I like him and his enthusiasm, but he should be more worried about his Red Sox approach than whining about totally legal bats the Yankees are using, bats that decimated a pitiful pitching staff in the Brewers.

Anthony Volpe, like All that Jazz is using the Torpedo Bat, and is off to a .167 start, but has hit two home runs in three games. Like I said there is a long, long way to go but the hot start has gotten the Yankees over the World Series hangover. That is big.

The 15 home runs through the first three games, matches the most home runs through three games in MLB history. The Tigers did the trick in 2006. That team beat the Yankees in the playoffs but lost the World Series in five games to the Cardinals. The Yankees have issues like losing Gerrit Cole to Tommy John surgery but if you mash, things tend to look better in baseball.

The goal is simple for the Yankees, beat up on all the wimpy kids masquerading as Major League teams and that especially means any teams from the NL Central or the AL Central, two AAA divisions. Take care of that and keep moving forward.

For the Yankees, it all comes down to winning a World Series again, something they have only done once since they won three straight in 1998, ’99 and 2000.

“Damn the torpedoes, full speed ahead.’’