AUTHOR’S NOTE: The Opening Week Edition of the Weekly Wrap-up was delayed due to chaos in the last week of the NHL’s regular season. Some of this week’s Wrap-up is outdated.
Happy Opening Week! The torpedo bats are flying, the bells are a-ringing, and the pitchers are throwing to their heart’s content! Here are some highlights of an action-packed Opening Week.
Torpedo Bats
*sighs*
I guess I have joined every other baseball writer, podcaster, and fan bloviating about the torpedo bats. I mean, even Oilers hockey reporter Gene Principe joked about the NHL introducing torpedo sticks during a pregame show. Is this what “growing the game” looks like?
The New York Yankees christened their torpedo bats on Opening Day by hitting nine home runs off the Brewers, including three off former Yankee Nestor Cortes. They went on to set a record 17 home runs, including a few from players using the torpedo bat.
For the uninitiated, torpedo bats weigh the same as a standard bat, but the mass of the barrel is concentrated in the sweet spot, which is the ideal place for a batter to hit the ball. A normal bat’s mass is more evenly distributed. So it’s harder to get a good hit with the torpedo bat, but when you do, oh boy, the ball is getting out of the park faster than a SpaceX rocket chased by a speaker playing Katy Perry’s “Firework”. Baseball fans and pundits quickly accused the Yankees of cheating. In response to this, MLB confirmed that torpedo bats do not violate rules, which only specify length, width, and weight requirements. Commissioner Rob Manfred added that the torpedo bats debate is “good for baseball,” creating buzz amidst a sports media environment that focuses much more on the NFL and the NBA. The fact that it also involves the Yankees never hurts, and now it can become an issue for future rulemaking and then even more controversy. After all, why juice the players when you can just juice the bats? Pine tar, anyone? (https://apnews.com/article/rob-manfred-torpedo-bats-robot-umpires-5b9d808217cbdcafa17884272dc75475)
For myself, I am encouraged that the bat’s inventor, Aaron Leanhardt, earned a PhD in physics from MIT before working as the Yankees’ minor league hitting coach, specializing in “[integrating] quantitative information with on-field performance.” (https://www.mlb.com/news/aaron-leanhardt-discusses-invention-of-torpedo-bats ) It shows how many ways one can put a degree to work outside of working in an academic role. I mean, I have parlayed my English degree into writing this newsletter while working on a master’s in library science AND looking for a library job, so yeah.
How About the Phightins?
Whatever the Phillies chose to tell themselves after last year's NLDS collapse seems to be working. The mighty Phils are off to, well, an okay start. Now, if our lineup could just learn how to hit starting pitching, we’d be in better shape. The problem is, the Phils’ batters practice hitting off the Phils’ middle relief and bullpen has been. So they know how to crush middle relief, as do every other team that faces them. Phillies’ pitching is like Flyers’ goaltending, so much possibility, so much pain. Regardless of how well our starting pitching is dealing strikes, even minus Aaron Nola, I cannot trust the bullpen. Jordan Romano is going to have to be the new Craig Kimbrel (if he can even get into games with the lead intact). That is all I have to say.
Downfall of the Braves
Tamper those tomahawks, Braves fans! The Braves started their season going 0 and 7, getting swept by both the Padres and the Dodgers (more about them when I talk about the NL West). In the Padres series, they went twenty-eight innings without scoring a run. That’s three games. No runs. Zero. (They could have used Bob Uecker, may his memory be a blessing, to do color for that stretch of doughnuts.) The Braves also went 4 for 8 with runners in scoring position (RISP) in their series against the Dodgers, which is Phillies-RISP levels of bad.
To make matters worse, the Braves’ only free agent acquisition, Jurickson Profar, tested positive for PEDs and was suspended for 81 games. If they somehow get out of this slump and secure a playoff spot, Profar also cannot play in the postseason, as his PED suspension excludes him from making the postseason lineup. It’s a shame because this year would have offered a chance to redeem his subpar 2024 postseason, when he compiled a .200 batting average and an on-base percentage that was a measly .286. Profar had hoped to follow in the footsteps of other postseason turnarounds, like the Guardians’ Jose Ramirez, who almost doubled his .186 batting average in the 2016 and 2018 postseasons into a .333 batting average in the 2022 postseason. Profar will have to wait another year at least for his shot, but he has learned his lesson. PEZ dispensers in the dugout -- totally fine! PED dispensers, not so much.
NL Best
The top three records in the MLB right now are an NL West sweep, including the Giants, Dodgers, and Padres (https://www.mlb.com/standings/?date=2025-04-11) . Each team has at least ten wins, outpacing leaders in other divisions who have only eight or nine wins. A hot start for the Dodgers is par for the course given their elite hitting and starting pitching. The same is true for the Padres, who are still looking to shake off the moniker of being Los Angeles’ little brother. The Giants finally get a full season of Jung-hoo Lee, who is hitting the cover off the ball (without a torpedo bat!), and currently has a .333 batting average. The NL West is the division to watch, and may be a division apart, as the season progresses.
Meanwhile, on the South Side
The White Sox are…, wait, this is hard for me to type … good? Okay, I know it’s just one week, but going 2 and 2 in their opening week far exceeds their 1-5 record this time a year. Mediocrity is brilliance by comparison. They did not let us down completely, though, putting up some classic White Sox moments. They lost two of their three games to the Guardians on a walk-off walk, followed by a player getting injured while trying to score the tying run. But at least their win pace is double last year’s rate. There’s only so much one can hope for until Jerry Reinsdorf gives up the ghost or sells the team.
Like a Rolling Stone, These Two Teams Have No Home
While most of the teams have home stadiums to open the season, two teams start the year without a permanent ballpark, the Tampa Bay Rays and the Sacramento Oakland Athletics. Hurricane Milton blew the roof off of the Rays’ ballpark, and with construction not started on a new stadium, the city and state were loath to pay tens of millions for a roof repair, only to have it torn down a couple of years from now.
The Yankees generously “gave” the Rays their spring training stadium to play home games. The Rays had to move their home opener back a day to repaint the stadium in Rays’ colors (https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/42875142/rays-opener-moved-back-day-prepare-steinbrenner-field). Regardless, the Rays’ games were well-attended, perhaps because the Yanks’ spring base in St. Petersburg is a better location than Tropicana Field in downtown Tampa. Will the Trop get refitted in time for next year’s Opening Day? Time will tell. But for now, the Rays are renting, and the Yanks are smiling.
Un-Oakland Athletics’ owner John Fisher gave the team’s former hometown the middle finger in all but fact, decamping to their Triple A ballpark in Sacramento while awaiting completion of a new stadium in Las Vegas. Fisher would rename the team the Raiders if he could. So much for Moneyball, and finding players that are diamonds in the rough. Soon, the A’s will just be ruffians playing in a sea of diamonds.
But, until then, the Athletics will suffer through one humiliation after another. Their first press conference was held in a shed in Sacramento–yes, a shed, where temperatures, if they keep it up, will top 100 degrees this summer. Yanks wannabe Rudy Giuliani suggested holding the presser outdoors at a garden center, but owner Fisher has other plans. Hopefully, cheap-o Fisher at least gives the beat reporters free water, but it’s just as likely that he will just give them coupons to Ralphs Food4Less to bring their own. Even the A’s injury vehicle broke down during a game against the Mets. Yet another dagger to a fanbase who have watched a comedy become a tragedy and now a farce. Oakland fans are used to watching their teams drift southwest to the desert, and now again, there’s Fisher, an owner in the Dan Snyder mold, replying to decades of loyalty with the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune.
But the opening month is almost done, the game is afoot, and it promises to deliver some amazing stories! I can’t wait!