MILWAUKEE (AP) — Brewers third baseman Oliver Dunn made his way to the plate with a in hand with one out in the second inning and teammate Garrett Mitchell on third base after a triple.
Dunn’s at-bat during on Wednesday afternoon was significant because he became the first Brewers player to use the model. His first “swing” with the bat, after with the specially-designed lumber in the season’s opening days, turned out to be not much of a swing at all.
Instead, Dunn put down a perfectly placed sacrifice bunt that allowed Mitchell to hustle home with the game’s first run in what would turn out to be a 5-1 Milwaukee victory.
“Torpedo bats. What a difference,” Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy said with a smile. “Did you see that bunt that scored the first run?”
Dunn’s decision to bunt caught teammate Sal Frelick off guard.
“It was his first at-bat with the torpedo. We were waiting for him to go hack up there and he dropped a little bunt down,” said Frelick, who homered for the first time this season, a sixth-inning solo shot using a standard bat.
The torpedo bat — a striking design in which wood is moved lower down the barrel after the label and shapes the end a little like a bowling pin — features a design by an MIT-educated physicist.
“In my career, I had hit a lot of balls lower on the barrel and saw that’s what it was for and I thought why not,” Dunn said of his decision to give the torpedo bat a try. “It felt good but I don’t think I’ve gotten enough swings with it on the field to feel a difference. But it swings well. It swings light. The weight’s in a different spot. I liked what I’ve seen of it so far, for sure.”
Dunn grounded out to second in his only other at-bat on the day before Vinny Capra pinch-hit for him in the sixth.
The irony of the situation wasn’t lost on Dunn, who said he was just trying to push across a run any way he could.
“It is funny that the first pitch I see was a bunt,” he said. “But it’s just a bat.”
Dunn said he expects to continue to use the torpedo, at least in the short term.
“I’ll probably roll with it initially and just get enough of a base to see if I like what I’m getting from it and make a decision from there,” Dunn said.
Whether any other Brewers players turn to the torpedo bat remains to be seen, but don’t expect Frelick to be one of them.
“I have no thoughts,” Frelick said when asked about the chatter surrounding the new-fangled bat. “You chop down a tree, you should be able to hit with it.”
___
AP MLB:
