The New York Yankees hit 13 home runs in the first three games of the new season. Not all were hit with the torpedo-style bats that the team has now made famous. That hasn’t stopped bleacher creatures across the game from questioning the legality of the bats, which were, in fact, approved by Major League Baseball for use in games long before the start of the 2025 season.
Now another controversy has arisen with Torpedo-mania: speculation that that bat style may have contributed to the ailing elbows of ailing Yankees slugger Giancarlo Stanton.
Giancarlo Stanton was out in front of the pack in 2024, punishing big-league pitching — especially during last October’s spotlight — with a torpedo-style bat, writes Pete Caldera of NorthJersey.com for Yahoo! Sports.
“Stanton slugged seven homers in 14 Yankees’ postseason games last year with a torpedo bat,” writes Caldera, “Then arrived at spring training with a severe version of tennis elbow in both elbows.”
Could the torpedo bat be to blame for the dueling elbow problems some reports say might keep Stanton out the entire 2025 season?
“You’re not going to get the story you’re looking for,” Stanton tells Caldera. Despite the mysterious response, Stanton confirmed he intends to stick with the torpedo bat when he returns — though exactly when that will be remains up in the air.
Last month, Stanton hinted that some of the “bat adjustments” he made during last season may have contributed to the bout of epicondylitis — better known as tennis elbow — that he’s currently battling. However, there is no hard proof linking the unique bat design to added stress on a hitter’s elbows — at least not yet — according to Jorge Castillo of ESPN.com.
Castillo also writes, somewhat interestingly, that Stanton “sometimes …opts for lighter bats at the end of the long season,” perhaps, in fact, alluding to bat-borne fatigue after all.
The Yankees will have plenty of time to sort through the speculation. Stanton isn’t expected back any time soon. The thirty-five-year-old has already gone through several rounds of platelet-rich plasma injections to help his ailing elbows and admitted during spring training that surgery on both elbows — potentially knocking him out for the season — is on the table.
