It only took a half-week for Yankees' creative advantage to disappear

Instead of ruining baseball, perhaps the Yankees are simply pushing it forward. This is the way baseball goes. Remember the exaggerated infield shift popularized by Joe Maddon and the Tampa Bay Rays? How about the opener strategy? Throughout baseball, the examples are endless.

Baseball, more than any other sport, is one built on competitive advantages. While every other major professional sport has a uniform playing surface, baseball stadiums are all unique. Home field advantage in baseball means something above and beyond the typical emotional lift a team may receive playing in front of its own fans; a franchise can literally tailor its roster to the strength of its ballpark.

Of course, that cuts both ways. As opposing fans often bemoan the short porch in right field at Yankee Stadium, their hitters can utilize it, too. Now, it seems, hitters on every team will be sporting torpedo bats as the bat manufacturers struggle to keep up with the demand.

Of course, as Brewers manager Pat Murphy astutely pointed out, "it ain't the wand, it's the magician." Now we're going to start to see how many skilled magicians there actually are.

The Yankees' place as an offensive powerhouse won't change as more teams begin using torpedo bats

Torpedo bats provide exactly one advantage to the hitter: the product allows for more wood to be allocated closer to the hands around the area of the label, so that a hitter can make more solid contact if that is where he most often strikes the baseball. You can think of it almost like how a pitcher may be more comfortable throwing from one side of the rubber than the other.

Just as not all pitchers perform the same because they use the same part of the rubber, not all hitters will perform the same with a torpedo bat. In fact, some may perform worse. Aaron Judge is the king of barrels, owning a cool 1.000 slugging percentage through his first eight games of the season, and would be less effective with such a bat, since it would take the mass away from where he most often makes contact.

This brings up the real truth of the matter: depending on the hitter and his swing, the torpedo bat could just as easily decrease his production. As these orders strain bat factories' production in a few weeks, we'll see them taper off as hitters learn that this shiny new invention is no magic bullet.

At which point, the Yankees' real competitive advantage will be revealed. You know, the one in which their vaunted lineup features three former MVPs. That means a lot more when it comes to terrorizing opposing pitching staffs than a slightly different-shaped bat.