01-04-2025
Sportsbooks unphased by new torpedo bats: ‘We don't do any knee-jerk reactions'
Torpedo bats have taken the baseball world by storm this season, with the New York Yankees unleashing them against the Milwaukee Brewers to start the season and smashing an MLB-record 15 home runs over their first three games.
The Yankees scored four runs on Opening Day before exploding for 20 and 12 runs, respectively, in their final two games against the Brewers. It's been runs galore for the Bronx Bombers, leading us to the question: Have sportsbooks noticed any early betting patterns with the popular new bats?
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For those of you who haven't read about the bat yet, simply put, it's a bat designed by an MIT-educated physicist that redistributes its weight from its end to the area where hitters usually make contact with the baseball — around 7-8 inches below its tip. As a result, you get a bat that looks more like a bowling pin and has a thicker sweet spot. Combine that bigger barrel look going viral on social media with bettors seeing a ton of runs scored and a lot of dingers, and you get the perfect storm of people betting overs.
According to Pikkit, an app that allows sports bettors to sync their sportsbook accounts, just 42.5 percent of all Brewers-Yankees total bets that it tracked on Opening Day came in on the over (that over/under closed at 8). In the series finale on Sunday, with the total closing at 8.5, 49.8 percent of those bets on the total tracked were on the over. But it's been a completely different story heading into Tuesday night's Yankees game. Pikkit shared that a whopping 90.5 percent of the bets on the Diamondbacks-Yankees total (currently over/under 8.5) are on the over.
While bettors are rushing to back the Yankees and overs, bookmakers seem unfazed.
'We started seeing some more over money on the Yankees in that third game against the Brewers,' said Johnny Avello, race and sports operations director at DraftKings. 'That's just bettors following a trend, and they will continue to follow it if it holds up. We don't do any knee-jerk reactions on a smaller sample size like three games. The total against the Diamondbacks and Corbin Burnes is still at 8.5 [for tonight], so obviously, we haven't made any crazy adjustments.'
Some sportsbooks are even jumping in on the fun with new offerings leaning into the craze.
DraftKings now has a tab under the MLB section of its sportsbook app labeled 'Torpedo Bats,' where it has filtered home run props that only show batters using torpedo bats. Fanatics Sportsbook promoted a parlay titled 'The Torpedo Touch' on its Twitter/X account earlier on Tuesday, which features four hitters using the new bat to all record a hit in Tuesday's games.
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'I'm already seeing guys on Twitter and Instagram sharing lists of guys who are using torpedo bats,' said Seamus Magee, trading manager at BetMGM. 'So I can't say I don't anticipate extra action on guys like Anthony Volpe or Jazz Chisholm or Cody Bellinger. But there were also non-Yankees included like Oneil Cruz and Elly De La Cruz. The betting public may be obsessed with the Yankees since they're getting the early headlines, but with these other players mentioned as well, I think you'll see those guys pop up more and more on social media with their home run odds too.'
Speaking of De La Cruz, Pikkit told The Athletic that he has attracted the most prop bets of any player for Tuesday's slate among all the MLB wagers it has tracked. Could you blame bettors? The Reds star whacked two home runs and had two other hits on Monday night with his torpedo bat, leading to a career-high seven RBIs.
Hard Rock Bet also shared that the fourth-most popular parlay in any sport Tuesday is a three-leg home run parlay at +14150 (or 141.5-to-1) odds involving hitters using torpedo bats: De La Cruz, Chisholm and Francisco Lindor. This was a parlay that was not prebuilt and promoted by the sportsbook initially, though it now resides in the 'Popular Parlays' section of the app.
One market to watch is home run prop bets, a popular wager among casual fans.
'Player props will be more of a focus for the public compared to the total,' said Eric Biggio, lead baseball trader at Caesars Sportsbook. 'I'd say for guys who aren't stars like Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm who are using torpedo bats, that the action on their home run props will be about five-fold compared to Opening Day. For Volpe, his Opening Day home run odds were 12-1 with us, and now he's down to 7-1. Chisholm was closer to 7-1 to homer on Opening Day, and today he's a little under 5-1. So those are the adjustments that are taking place. I still think it's too short of a sample size for bigger adjustments like totals.'
Will torpedo bats eventually make sportsbooks adjust? This will be a fun topic to keep on as the season progresses.
