Jesse LaCasse examines the barrel of a torpedo bat he turned on a wood lathe at Maine Billets in Anson on Monday. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

ANSON — Inside a small, easy-to-miss building tucked at the end of West Mills Road, work is being done that is revolutionizing professional baseball at its highest level.

The workshop’s exterior blends right in with Maine’s countryside. Inside, the many stacks of wood seem a proper fixture given the area’s lumber history.

It’s here, at Maine Billets, that torpedo bats — which have taken Major League Baseball by storm this season — are manufactured. Two weeks ago, the New York Yankees set an MLB record with 15 home runs over their first three games, nine of which came courtesy of players using the new torpedo bats. Some of those bats were produced by Maine Billets.

“I would’ve never expected any product to take off the way this torpedo bat has, so it’s super exciting,” said Jesse LaCasse, founder and owner of Maine Billets. “I think that’s a great part about making bats, that there’s always something new that comes along. I’m excited to see where it goes next.”

LaCasse said that the Yankees reached out to Maine Billets with an idea in May 2023. Aaron Leanhardt, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist, had drawn up a new model of a bat that moved the bulkiest part of the wooden bat closer to the middle. The result is a bowling-pin shaped bat that has thinner ends.

They asked Maine Billets to produce them.

“It was surprising to us — that doesn’t happen all the time, being a small company in Maine — but we jumped on the idea,” said LaCasse, who has been making bats since 2006.

After the company made and delivered three batches of 16 bats to the Yankees over a span of three months, LaCasse and his business partner Brian Luce didn’t hear much about the project for two years. Then came the Yankees’ record-breaking home run barrage.

“We didn’t think anything of it until this past weekend, but then, this all happened, and it was like, ‘Wow, those are the prototypes we made,’” LaCasse said in an interview Friday from the Maine Billets shop floor.

The Yankees declined through a spokesperson to comment about the club using torpedo bats from Maine Billets.

With players from 10 different MLB teams now using the new equipment, the thicker-sweet-spot design has taken off throughout baseball. Factories nationwide have ramped up production with models from Louisville Slugger, Marucci, Chandler Bats and Victus flying off the shelves, retailing for about $200 each.

BATS TAKE OFF

Despite the national suppliers stepping in, Maine Billets hasn’t been left behind.

“To say (we’ve gotten a lot of inquiries lately) would be an understatement,” said LaCasse. “I added the torpedo bats to our website at 8:30 a.m. (on March 31). By 9:05 a.m., I already had my first order, and I don’t think they stopped coming in throughout the day.”

In the minors, the Portland Sea Dogs have also put in an order. They’ve also taken off with least one Maine high school baseball team: Madison, from which LaCasse graduated in 2003.

Madison High’s Xavier Estes, a senior for the Bulldogs, plans to use a torpedo bat during games this season. “I feel like I can direct the barrel way better,” he said. Mike Mandell/Morning Sentinel

Madison players Logan Dawes, Xavier Estes, Jayden Horton, Kamdyn Norton and Tyler Johnson are testing them out now. Estes said he even plans to use them in games this season.

The difference is “astonishing; it feels heavy when you first use it, but then you start swinging it, and it’s just so balanced,” Estes said. “For me, I’ve always been more of a contact guy than a power hitter, but with how big the barrel is, I really get under it and hit really solid line drives staying gap-to-gap.”

Since getting their hands on the bats early last week, the five Madison players have spent hours hitting with them at LaCasse’s private batting cage in Skowhegan. Estes, who also works for Maine Billets, can even make the bats himself, a process that takes just a few minutes through automated machinery.

“I’ve always been a big aluminum guy — at the beginning year, I thought I was going to be swinging a (2025 Louisville Slugger) Atlas — but seeing these, I just feel like I have more barrel control than the Atlas,” Estes said. “I feel like I can direct the barrel way better.” The Atlas bat retails anywhere from about $200 to $300.

WAITING FOR DATA

Most of Maine, though, has yet to get behind the trend. Greely coach Derek Soule and Mt. Ararat coach Brett Chase said their teams are not using torpedo bats this season. Bucksport coach Josh Jackson, Messalonskee coach Eric Palin and Scarborough coach Wes Ridlon said none of their players have tried them yet.

The type of bat players use, Ridlon said, and most coaches would agree, takes a backseat to swing mechanics when it comes to offensive production. Still, he’s intrigued by the design, and said he will be watching closely over the next year to see whether the data show the bats making a positive difference.

“We’re really focused on getting the barrel to baseball, and I’m sure it plays a little different in terms of getting a little more room for error on some of those inside pitches vs. versus outside ones,” Ridlon said. “With new technology or differences in any kind of equipment that might give you an edge, that’s always something we’re going to monitor.”

Mike D’Andrea, who coaches Falmouth as well as the Maine Lightning AAU team, is quick to point out that it’s too early to declare torpedo bats a definitive success in the big leagues. He’s opposed to his Falmouth players using the bats this year and wonders if they are truly better than more traditional designs, or just the latest fad.

“I don’t think there’s going to be enough concrete evidence, I would say, until we have it for a year or two and can look at numbers,” D’Andrea said. “I anticipate this being a very interesting year with that bat, but I’m very, very curious to see what the numbers look like. … I don’t know if it’s going to help them barrel up baseballs.”’

Maine Principals’ Association Director Mike Burnham said the torpedo bats are legal to use in the high school game. Unlike metal bats, wooden bats have no weight requirements under National Federation of State High School Associations rules, meaning that torpedo bats can be used as long as their diameter does not exceed 2¾ inches. Torpedo bats do not exceed 2¾ inches in diameter at the widest point.

Jesse LaCasse pulls torpedo bats from a rack at his shop in Anson on Monday. Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

“All they’re doing is making a bigger sweet spot by taking some (wood) from the handle and some from the end and pushing it,” added Kevin Joyce, the State of Maine Umpire Association’s liaison to the MPA’s Baseball Committee. “That’s not against the rules, so as long as they’re not bigger than 2¾, they’re fine.”

A huge proponent of wooden bats, Madison coach Shawn Bean welcomes the torpedo’s emergence. Sure, there might be a baseball purist aspect to his preference of wood over aluminum, but there’s another — one that speaks to the realities of April and May in Maine.

“I think metal reacts better when the weather’s warm, and with high school baseball in Maine, we might have only two or three weeks at the end of the season where that’s the case,” Bean said. The torpedo bats “are a fad the kids have been wanting to try, and I’m all about wood, so I like them.”