Untold story of how Reds star Elly De La Cruz found his new torpedo bat
MILWAUKEE — The first day Elly De La Cruz got his hands on one of those newly designed torpedo bats last week, he fell for baseball’s newest craze.
“They brought one, I tried it in practice, and then I used it in the game,” he said.
By now everyone who follows the Cincinnati Reds knows what the team’s dynamic young star did the first day he used one of those bats.
He said has no idea whether anyone analyzed his swing to tailor the thicker part of the barrel for his individual sweet spot, but four hits, 11 total bases and seven runs batted in later, he ordered more of the bats that night.
That shipment is expected to be waiting for him when he and the Reds return home to open a homestand Friday against the Pittsburgh Pirates.
Meanwhile he has alternated between his old bat and the newly styled one, which also is called a bowling-pin bat because of how the barrel looks when the bulge in the barrel is created at the hitter’s natural contact spot, causing the barrel to taper from there to the end.
Whether the torpedo-bat craze sticks with lasting impact on the game any more than and axe-handled bats or pillbox-style caps, a big season by De La Cruz goes with the new style is certain to have an outsized impact on its popularity.
And that will take the story behind how he suddenly came to use it not only his story, but history.
The Reds were not one of the four or five MLB teams (including the Yankees and division-rival Cubs) experimenting with the torpedo bats before that Monday night at Great American Ball Park against the Rangers.
Not until the buzz created during the opening weekend at Yankee Stadium when the Yankees crushed the Pirates in a three-day barrage of home runs, many of the players talking about doing it with the new bats.
By that Monday, representatives from Louisville Slugger were in Cincinnati with a bat for De La Cruz after the bat maker got an urgent call coming out of the weekend saying, “We need to see you now,” Bob Hillerich, the fifth-generation executive of the company told the Louisville Courier-Journal.
But it was not the Reds who called. It was from De La Cruz’s representatives at Boras Corporation.
Turns out the Reds handle the job of tracking specs and ordering bats for all the team’s players except De La Cruz.
Instead, his agency does that for him, using multiple bat companies, and paying for them, which provides an advantage of especially personalized attention while also retaining De La Cruz’s possession of used (and broken) bats.
De La Cruz already was intrigued by newly acquired catcher Jose Trevino, the former Yankee, talking about how much he liked the torpedo bat he uses — even before his old team went nuts on the Pirates.
At which point the phone rang in Louisville.
“We ordered a sample bat for him,” agent Scott Boras said. “They brought it, and he used it,”
And the only reason he didn't have his own batch of fresh bats in Milwaukee for the start of that series last week is because of shipping delays caused by weather.
So if the rest becomes history, the Pirates may be the unfortunate punching bags again when De La Cruz gets his new shipment this week.
Not that unique bat styles are new. They’ve come and gone almost as long as big-league players have.
Even Trevino can’t say how much of the impact so far is psychological or physical.
“I’m not too sure,” he said.
He just knows he likes it.
As once-touted minor-league catcher Crash Davis said in 1988, “If you believe you’re playing well because you’re getting (some), or because you’re not getting (some), or because you wear women’s underwear, then you are.”
And Reds manager Terry Francona downplayed the impact of the equipment after De La Cruz’s torpedo bat breakout night.
Boras echoed the thought, mentioning De La Cruz’s elite bat speed.
“It’s not the noodle,” Boras said. “It’s the chef.”
But every chef also knows that the power of any great pasta dish starts with the noodle.
Al dente.
Stephanie Kuzydym of the Courier-Journal contributed to this report.