"They're absolutely good for baseball," he said to the New York Times ' Michael S. Schmidt. "I believe that issues like the torpedo bat and the debate around it demonstrate the fact that baseball still occupies a unique place in our culture, because people get into a complete frenzy over something that’s really nothing at the end of the day.

In an interview with The New York Times, Manfred also forecasted fans getting more access to game broadcasts after the 2028 season.

One individual voice who had not weighed in on the situation, however, was MLB commissioner Rob Manfred. He remedied that Sunday, throwing his full support behind torpedo bats. Manfred went so far as to call them " absolutely good for baseball ," according to the New York Times.

Schmidt, Manfred explained that pitchers are "already damaged goods" because of how they're being taught to throw at a young age: "I think pitching injuries may be one of the most difficult problems that we have confronted.

MLB commissioner Rob Manfred is pleased with how the automated ball-strike system experiment went during spring training. Speaking to Michael S. Schmidt of the New York Times, Manfred called the use of ABS this spring "really successful" with the hope it can be implemented in the regular season starting in 2026: "I think the owners made a good choice by going with the challenge system first,

The talk of the early portion of the 2025 MLB season has been the “torpedo” bats used primarily by the New York Yankees. In a nutshell, the fattest part of the bat has been moved farther down for some players in an effort to prevent hitters from being jammed.

Torpedo bats are all the rage this season, and Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred says he believes all that chatter is good for the game.

The story of the 2025 MLB season so far is the torpedo bat designed by Miami Marlins coach and former MIT physicist Aaron Leanhardt.

Torpedo bats are all the rage this season, and Major League Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred believes all that chatter is positive for the sport. "They're absolutely good for baseball," Manfred said in a Q&A published by The New York Times on Sunday.