BOISE, Idaho — Everybody in Major League Baseball is talking about it — torpedo bats.
Orv Franchuck would know. “Hitting a baseball is the hardest thing to do in sports. There’s nothing harder than hitting a baseball,” Franchuk said.
Franchuk spent over 28 years in professional baseball as a hitting coach, among other positions, including being a member of the 2004 World Series Champion Boston Red Sox. Now retired, he helps at Play Deep Academy.
Owner David Haws will custom make torpedo bats for players jumping on the torpedo bandwagon. Why? According to a recent ESPN report, in less than a week this season, production of torpedo bats in the Major Leagues has tripled.
David Haws explains. “This is a normal bat — you can see where the barrel of this bat is, it’s much thicker here ... , so you move the sweet spot three inches closer to the hand. The reason they move it is because, especially in the Major Leagues, you’re seeing a lot of velocity, and it’s hard when you get inside pitches to get the meat of the bat."
Both Haws and Franchuk want the younger players to get comfortable with all wooden bats, including the torpedo bats. Franchuk puts it this way. “I like to have guys hit with wood as much as possible because eventually if you get to the big leagues you’re going to have to hit with wood and that’s what most of these kids come here for, they want to be a big leaguer.”
Because if you can consistently hit 300, you’ve made it — or as Orv Franchuk puts it, “What other sport in the world can you be successful and fail 70 percent of the time? There aren’t any.”
