Baseball star Jazz Chisholm Jr has taken to social media in defense of the New York Yankees‘ controversial new ‘torpedo bats’, brutally trolling Dave Portnoy after he called for them to be banned from the sport.
Several Yankees players have started using the new-style bat, and Chisholm has been one of the main benefactors, hitting three home runs across the first three games of the season.
After the Bronx Bombers’ third straight win, Portnoy – a renowned Boston Red Sox supporter – took to social media for an ‘emergency press conference’, calling out Chisholm by name as well as labeling the team ‘cheats’.
It didn’t take long for Chisholm himself to hit back, using the Yankees’ off day on Monday to open up his social media and write a response to the Barstool Sports founder.
‘This is a high school baller talking,’ he replied, implying that Portnoy lacks the expertise to be able to comment on professional baseball equipment.
A fan then weighed in, asking ‘shouldn’t you be crying about locker room stuff?’, a reference to when Chisholm previously slammed a Miami Marlins teammate for fostering negativity in the locker room.
Jazz Chisholm took to X to hit back at Dave Portnoy’s rant that the Yankees are cheating
Chisholm has hit three runs in three games to start the season, and the Yankees are unbeaten
Chisholm then rebuked: ‘Nah I play for the Yankees so I’m chilling,’ with a shoulder-shrugging emoji.
Another fan also called out Chisholm, claiming that he ‘needs a modified bat to get on base in the bigs’, to which he replied: ‘Was an All-Star before using it! It’s the Indian not the arrow, old man.’
The new-style bats – created by 2024 Yankees analyst and current Marlins field coordinator Aaron Leanhardt – have redistributed weight from the end of the bat towards an area six inches lower, where MLB players typically make contact with the ball.
In Portnoy’s initial rant on social media on Sunday, he claimed: ‘Of course, the Yankees hired an MIT physicist to basically take wood from the other parts of the bat. Like near the handle label and put it in the sweet spot to make the sweet spot bigger.
‘They did this because Anthony Volpe sucks and he kept getting jammed and sawed off and we’re like, «How do we make him not suck? Let’s just make this bat called a torpedo bat.» Where basically, you swing and you make contact on the handle, get sawed off, it’s a homerun.
He also responded to a fan who tried to re-hash some old comments from his time in Miami
Chisholm is among the few Yankees players using the new-style ‘torpedo bat’ this season
‘So I think the Yankees have hit like, I think, 13 home runs. Jazz Chisholm, or whatever that guy, he’s got like 13 home runs. Aaron Judge is hitting home runs, he’s saying he’s not using the torpedo bats, he is, take a look.’
Portnoy then added how the rest of MLB will adopt the loophole despite it being considered cheating.
‘All of the teams are gonna use it,’ Portnoy claimed. ‘Should it be legal? No. Is it cheating? Yeah, it is.
‘If you get sawed off, or you hit the ball off the label, that means you’re not getting your hands through enough and you stink. Just taking the bat and making the thing like a corked bat with this torpedo hump, so all you gotta do is make contact, it’s a home run… That just makes someone who stinks better.
‘That’s just some geek from MIT ruining 100 years of baseball or 200 years of baseball. So listen, if MLB wants to sit on their a** and not outlaw this torpedo bat, then all the teams around going to do it and every game is gonna be 100-98, there’s gonna be 3,000 home runs.
‘I’m fine with it. Yankees have a long history of cheating and being scumbags and this just the latest. I think I saw the Twins or some other team using it, but you gotta get rid of the torpedo bats. It’s unfair to the pitchers, it’s stupid for the game.’
Aaron Judge is still using his old bat and has hit four home runs in three games to start the year
Aside from Portnoy and fans, Brewers pitcher Trevor Megill also made his feelings known about the torpedo bats after the game.
‘I think it’s terrible. We’ll see what the data says. I’ve never seen anything like it before,’ Megill said. ‘I feel like it’s something used in slow-pitch softball.
Megill has yet to pitch in 2025 and admitted that moving the barrel of the bat could be a ‘genius’ move.
‘It’s genius: Put the mass all in one spot,’ he added. ‘It might be bush [league]. It might not be. But it’s the Yankees, so they’ll let it slide.’
