The New York Yankees’ offense was the talk of the baseball world during the first weekend of the 2025 season.
Some of the players on their team were using new torpedo bats that went viral with every home run the team hit.
In three games against the Milwaukee Brewers in the first series of the campaign, the Yankees launched 15 home runs. Four of them came from reigning American League MVP Aaron Judge, who doesn’t use the torpedo bat.
Jazz Chisholm Jr. was right behind him with three and has become one of the poster boys for the new bat that is catching on around the league. Interest in it has boomed and other teams and players want to get in on the action.
While debate will rage on about how much the torpedo helps a player — if it does at all — compared to a regular bat, there is one thing that is for certain from that first series; the Brewers put together an awful game plan on the mound.
They did a poor job of keeping New York off balance at the plate, not doing a good enough job of mixing in other pitches to make up for the lack of velocity on their fastballs.
Out of the 514 fastballs thrown by Milwaukee pitchers, 125 of them were clocked at 90 mph or slower. The Yankees crushed those pitches, recording a .350 batting average and 1.100 slugging percentage, launching five home runs off such offerings.
A large chunk of those came from facing a position player, Jake Bauers, who pitched two innings in the series and didn’t allow a single run. Even when taking out his fastballs, the Brewers still threw significantly more than anyone else over the first series of the season.
The next highest among of fastballs faced that were 90 mph or less was 81.
Coincidentally, it was Milwaukee on the receiving end of those, but they didn’t do anywhere near as much damage as New York did, hitting only .217 with a .348 slugging percentage.
If a pitching staff isn’t going to overpower opponents with high velocity, pinpoint accuracy needs to be shown. That was also lacking, as too often Brewers pitchers threw middle-cut fastballs that were pounced on.
The 88-92 mph fastball usage was certainly something the Yankees took advantage of, but it didn’t matter what pitch was coming; the lineup was locked in and ready to produce regardless of what they were facing.