The New York Yankees franchise has been around for more than 120 years and played nearly 20,000 games, but it has never had a day like Saturday. The Bronx Bombers hit a team-record nine home runs, one shy of the MLB mark set by the Toronto Blue Jays in 1987, during a 20-9 win over the Milwaukee Brewers.
After the game, the buzz was around the new bats used by several Yankees, including Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Anthony Volpe, who both hit home runs.
“The Yankee front office, the analytics department, did a study on Anthony Volpe, and every single ball, it seemed like, he hit on the label,” Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay explained during the YES Network telecast. “He didn’t hit any on the barrel. So they had bats made up where they moved a lot of the wood into the label so the harder part of the bat is going to actually strike the ball.”
The bats do not violate any rules, an MLB spokesperson confirmed with Sportico.
MLB’s rulebook lays out the specifications for a bat. “The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length,” Rule 3.02 states. It adds that no experimental bats can be used in a game until the manufacturer “has secured approval from the Rules Committee of his design and methods of manufacture.”
As long as approved bat suppliers have adhered to the requirements in the rule book, MLB has traditionally not otherwise legislated bat dimensions and shapes within those restrictions.
Aaron Judge was the biggest contributor to the Saturday home run barrage with three long balls and a fourth hit that went off the wall for a double. Judge was using a traditional bat that he used last year to slug his 300th career home run in his 955th game, making him the fastest player in MLB history to reach that threshold.
The Yankees are MLB’s most valuable franchise at $8.39 billion and rank third among global sports franchises behind the Dallas Cowboys ($10.32 billion) and Golden State Warriors ($9.14 billion).
