Cardinals’ Contreras brings ‘torpedo bat’ fad to St. Louis, blasts first HR
Willson Contreras’ first home run of the season on Sunday was not the direct result of the bat he used.
The St. Louis Cardinals have been waiting for their first baseman to come out of his early season funk, and a couple strong swings on Saturday were more likely the harbinger of his success than baseball’s hottest trend, the so-called torpedo bats which have been creeping into the sport for several seasons but burst onto center stage after the New York Yankees used them to bludgeon the Milwaukee Brewers in the season’s opening weekend.
Still, when a fancy new toy hits the clubhouse, it draws attention. Baseball is renowned for its rituals and superstitions, and if a teammate is having success with something new, it can spread rapidly. Coveting, after all, begins with what we see up close every day.
Sometimes it’s OK to swipe, but not always.
“I only have six of these,” a grinning Contreras said Monday, unusually shaped bat in hand in Busch Stadium’s home dugout. “It’s not cool [to take one] right now.”
The practice of swapping and trying bats inside a major league clubhouse is likely as old as the game itself. When a hitter isn’t swinging it in a way that feels right, one of the first places they’ll turn is bound to be replacement lumber. In a room that’s wall to wall with fresh bats – and storage closets bursting at the seams with many more – it’s usually not a big deal to swipe one from a teammate. Usually.
“If you’ve done it before with that guy,” said Michael Siani when asked how he judges whose bats he feels comfortable trying out. “Say I borrowed Lars [Nootbaar]’s bat, talked to him about it, liked his bat, and I see another one? You can grab it.”
Siani was holding one of his own bats in his hand as he explained the process; or, at least, nominally one of his own bats. The Louisville Slugger was adorned with his signature carved into the wood, but the size and shape of the implement wasn’t originally his. Last season, he picked up a bat belonging to Pedro Pagés, tried it out, and found it comfortable. Both players use the same manufacturer, so Siani simply requested duplicates of the Pagés pattern for his own stock.
Meanwhile, Pagés was out shopping, trying on the deeper cup bat being swung by Brendan Donovan. It was easy, last year, for Pagés to pass on some of his back stock, since he was already dipping into a different teammate’s.
“Borrowed from,” Donovan said firmly when asked if he was more likely to do the borrowing himself or be the person from whom bats are borrowed. “Maybe I’m stubborn in what I do, but I try not to change.”
Broadly, though, Donovan agreed with Siani’s assessment of the internal politics of the exchange. “As long as somebody has a bunch, I think it’s free game,” he mused.
Geography also plays a role. Pagés and Siani have lockers in the same small section of the Cardinals’ clubhouse, and Donovan was in that cluster last year. A player’s day at the ballpark rarely lacks downtime, and the small talk that erupts among those closest by will inevitably lead to swapping stories and then sticks.
Friday’s game against the Philadelphia Phillies was the first for the team after a week-long road trip, which meant it was also a heavy mail day. Fan letters and packages tend to show up at locker stalls after having been sent to the stadium, but so too do shipments of equipment. It was then, on a day he was scheduled to have off, that Contreras unpacked his first shipment of Tucci bats which had the widest part of the barrel shifted further down closer to his hands, tapering to a narrower end.
Contreras said that an equipment representative who visited the team during spring training had a few samples and was selling them with the notion that the Yankees used the bats during last fall’s World Series. A skeptical Contreras took them for a brief test drive, didn’t like the feel, and went back to his standard pattern.
After starting the season 5-for-49 with 22 strikeouts, he reassessed his beliefs. After batting practice Friday, the new bats got game action on Saturday, when he delivered two singles. After a homer and a double on Sunday, he’s a full on convert – for now.
“Maybe more mentally than anything else,” Contreras said of the boost he received from his new lumber. “Physically, you can do all the stuff and you can practice and be great at practice, but mentally I think is the base of everything.”
That, ultimately, gets to the heart of baseball’s bat swapping culture. Whether Donovan’s deeper cup and different balance actually unlocked something in Pagés’ swing is perhaps less likely than the catcher finding it himself with a new confidence that came from trying something new.
To be a good teammate is to be open to those possibilities, and being willing to be giving of yourself when someone else in the clubhouse comes to you in need. With a wink and a nod and some underlying handshake rules in place, sliding a bat off someone else’s shelf and taking it for a test drive is understood to be part of the process – as long as supplies aren’t running short.