Former Yankees hitting coach breaks down bat personalization | MLB Now

Middle at four three o'clock Eastern time you can see the Yankees and Tigers right here live on MLB Network Yankees an exciting club obviously got a whole workup on Aaron Judge tomorrow. Case I know you're on the show so judges doing historic things as player in the universe. No question that's a Yankees at the best hitter anyway Yankees and. Oh yeah you're right. All right. Yankees and Tigers and I'm saying he's underrated. Sean Casey is here. I want to get right into it because Sean Casey was the hitting coach for the Yankees last year. He worked a lot with Aaron Judge Anthony Volpe and more. And we have finally the torpedo bats out here in our hands. And I'm so I don't walk around like you do like swinging a bat all the time. Case I can absolutely feel the difference with a torpedo bat. I can feel the balance of this bat. It's different. Well you know listen you can see obviously at the end of the bat this is a torpedo bat too. This is a P5 which is a pool model at the end of the bat. What they've done here it's really nothing new to tell you the truth. But the great analytics of you know listen teams want to win on the margins now. You can't at the end of the day what fine things could they do. And what they found was Volpe was kind of the prototype. I think when they said OK most of the balls that he hits he gets a lot of balls down towards the label. So what we used to have barrels that were a little bigger. Now what they're doing is they're taking that weight and the and the and the right they're taking some of that wood off at the end of the bat here and moving the sweet spot down a little bit right. Which is which is totally things that they've always done. I want to show you really quick if you go look at some other bats. So so this is an AP five. This is Albert Pujols five. This is his model. I used to swing I used to swing this model at the end of my career. So if you look at this this model if you're a hitter you like OK the handle is a little thinner. It gets gradually to a bigger barrel right in this barrel. If you can look at this barrel how different this is. This barrel is a gradual barrel all the way down. This is pretty much a normal one and the torpedo one is just a little thinner at the top. This is something that that when you look back a few years ago Marucci started doing this Marucci and Vick this Vick this is the bat where they started with the torpedo bats in Baton Rouge at the Marucci lab they have there. What they started to do was they started to do it like golf. Hey come on in. We're going to we're going to take a look how your body works right. How your bat speed looks what weight you should have on the bat like they would do with a pro golfer right. They would bring him in and do all that. And that's where a couple years ago do you remember Paul Goldschmidt when he won the when he won the MVP in twenty twenty two. What did he have. They put a little hockey puck and a stick wood down there that weighted his bat differently. They said hey Paul right if we weight your bat more at the end here you're going to have better bat speed. And you can see right there you can see that puck right there at that at the bottom of his bat. That's not part of his bat. They put that on there because what it showed was what the Vick this and Marucci lab showed was hey you're better if you have more weight on the on the bottom part of this handle. So that's what this is. All this is is guys have always go back to you know Louisville slugger bats. When I first came into the pro-ball to seventy one was a thinner handle thinner barrel but lighter back to forty three was it was a little bit of a thicker handle with a big barrel that right T-1 forty once. This is nothing new BK. This is why I can feel the bat like you know what Clay Clay that Cody Bellinger is talking about the balance. I can feel again I don't swing a bat every day. I can feel that the weight is closer to my hands here as opposed to at the end like Pujols you just swing a sledge hammer. Yeah this is not a sledgehammer. No there's a more weight. I can feel that weight here. Yes you can feel more weight. And obviously there's more there's more barrel going down. Now here's one thing that's interesting I think as a hitter a lot of hitters when they're when they're Barry Bonds Barry Bonds what he used to hit and a lot of guys hit sometimes would choke up a little bit right little choked up a little bit. Why do you choke up because you want to you want to you want this barrel to feel like you could put it anywhere you want like almost like you were playing pepper. Now when I grab this torpedo bat and I'm hold it down on the knob down here I almost feel like I'm choked up a little bit because the weight is right closer to you. So it almost feels like OK I could put this I could put this barrel on the ball a lot easier than than sometimes when you're you're trying to hit it at the normal speed. You did a lot of work with Anthony Volpe. I want to look at some Volpe tape. I look at some of his mechanics. So what was your point of emphasis last year when you when you got a lot you got a lot out of Anthony Volpe. Yeah. Two years ago you know one thing about Volpe is I think he's best when he's going to right center and he shows right here that short porch and right field for New York when he's hitting well that's a great place for him getting the ball up. But one thing with Volpe what they found is that when they're pounding them inside he can still take that ball in and drive it to right center. But you can see right here sometimes with Volpe it's not just the sweet spot that he hits it on. It's more down towards the label. So why not make a bat that plays right to like like I said like almost like a golfer you're making a bat tailor made to the analytics of Volpe swing. Talk about analytics coming to play. Right. We can now break down a pitch by pitch by pitch at bat where his barrel comes into the zone. So if on certain amount of pitches he's hitting a lot of balls not off the end but off the label let's play the percentages move the sweet spot down a little bit make it a little bigger. Can I ask you a specific question. What's the difference. Is there a huge difference between teams that were like hey because we saw Ellie Delacruz grabbed a Torpedo bat ends up hitting two home runs he's Ellie Delacruz. What's the difference between a guy grabbing a Torpedo bat and a guy having a Torpedo bat engineered specifically for him. How big of a difference. I think it's definitely different. I would rather have it engineered for my that's what the Yankees are and what I'm doing. No doubt about it. And also to listen at the end of the day it's what do they say. It's the it's the magician not the wand. You still have to be a good player. You still have to get a good pitch to him. But we're getting things on the march. You know a little bit better. There's no doubt about it. And one of the things you talk about talk about the weight the pitch shaping of these guys nowadays. There's pitch labs where they're like OK I'm going to throw you a cutter in on your hands if you're lefty. I'm going to throw you if I'm if I'm a lefty sinker ball in on your hands. So a lot of times as a hitter if you keep busting me in and trying to work those cutters and sinkers in and I have more play on the label down here man I'm going to be a better hitter. Yeah look it's intelligence and counterintuitive. People are asking me like hey what are they going to do about these Torpedo bats. I'm like we're going to enjoy it is what we're going to do. Are you kidding me. That's right. It's fantastic. And maybe I look at more like Volpe or like you know the way Paul Molitor used to hit. Yeah he would just punch right to the. I would think that's going to help that type of hitter more. And don't you want that in baseball. I think so. I think more guys get jammed on the label than they do hitting it off the end of the bat. So guys are going to have if you have more forgiveness down here towards the label you're going to have a guys you have better offense. You showed very high level of restraint not actually doing a full swing. Every time you take a swing I don't want to get anywhere near this guy.