New Haven Register (New Haven, CT)
Baseball bats manufacturer comes to Cheshire
CHESHIRE — Following Major League Baseball’s opening day, U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal paid a visit to Tater Baseball’s home base, where they make baseball bats and gear used by players on the New York Mets, Los Angeles Dodgers, Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres, and Toronto Blue Jays.
The business started in the family’s shed, reached first base in the family’s two-car garage, tagged second base on Waterbury’s East Aurora Street and with the help of a double has past third base and slid to its new home base at 1484 Highland Ave., Unit 8A in Cheshire.
Jeremiah Vargas, co-founder of Tater Baseball — Professional Baseball Equipment, said things have been going well at the new 3,000-square-foot space.
“We held a soft opening back in September of 2023 and officially opened manufacturing along with the storefront open full-time in early March,” Vargas said. “We’re hoping to do a full grand opening some time before the summer baseball season in early to mid-June.”
“Thankfully the transition to the new location has been great and smooth,” he said. “Reception from clientele has been great as well. It was a little bit more of a drawn-out process than we initially thought it (would be) just because getting things situated with the manufacturing side of things in house here, but we couldn’t be happier with how things transitioned.”
“We have around 980 square feet dedicated to just a baseball experience for families in the area and all across the tri-state area, which is huge and something we didn’t have prior,” Vargas said. “We maybe only had about 125 square feet for people to look around and shop for bats.”
Customers can now browse the luxurious boutique-style showroom, which showcases the bats, fitting gloves, apparel, and everything else the company has to offer.
Tater Baseball started in 2015 at Tater Bats with brothers Jeremiah Vargas and Freddie Vargas Jr. and their father, Freddy Vargas Sr.
“The name of the company was Tater Bats, and we were known as a baseball bat company for a long time,” Jeremiah Vargas said. “Then over the course of the last few years, we’ve made the transition to Tater Baseball — Professional Baseball Equipment, and this new space is helping us embody the look and feel of being the full-service brand that we’ve always wanted to kind of portray.”
Tater manufactures wooden game and training bats, producing between 8,000 and 10,000 baseball bats per year, some of which are custom-built. The pro bats range from $175 to $220. The company also carries branded gloves and gear. The products are created for and used by players from Little League to MLB, as well as more than 150 professional players in the minor leagues.
“Everyone who has been using Tater for the last couple years has continued to do so, which has been great; the loyalty is big for us on both sides,” Jeremiah Vargas said. “A couple big players like Vladimir Guerrero Jr. on the Blue Jays started making the transition to using Tater toward the end of last season on a more consistent basis, which has been great for us; he’s a big name. He is actually the MLB cover athlete, and we’ve gotten a chance to work with him directly, and it’s been really cool getting to know him a little more.”
The company has had a couple new players on the Mets and the Red Sox that have started using their equipment.
“Zack Short on the Red Sox, who is actually a Sacred Heart University graduate, started using Tater in the off season and transitioned to using us, which has been great. Also, Tyler Heineman on the Red Sox as well,” Jeremiah Vargas said.
On opening day, the Tater team got the opportunity to tell Blumenthal all about the players
utilizing their products, and how Tater has grown over the past eight years.
“It was a full bat-making
tour. He learned about the batmaking process and, in detail, about how a premium baseball bat is manufactured for big league guys,” Jeremiah Vargas said. “He was very interested in the details of the bat-making process from the sourcing to cutting to the designing process. We spent a good amount of time describing what it was like when you are sourcing premium wood and what specific woods make good baseball bats to be used in professional play.”
Jeremiah Vargas said the majority of MLB grade wood is sourced in the upstate New York-Canadian tree line, and Tater works with a smaller company in Canada.
“He also asked us how we planned on transitioning Tater in the next couple years,” Jeremiah Vargas said. “And we see ourselves expanding a bit more.”
Once everything is settled, the company will give tours of the manufacturing space, where everyone will be given an opportunity to see the full “very tedious and detail-oriented,” bat-making process.
They recently started doing team apparel and premium baseball apparel for performance (retail wear) and team wear for teams’ uniforms. They will continue to increase product lines and staffing as well. And in the near future they plan to open up a space with a batting cage and other types of things.
Connecticut Sen. Chris Murphy also paid a visit to the Tater team back in May of 2019, naming the company his manufacturer of the week.
“This journey has truly been a blessing,” Jeremiah Vargas said. “Tater is a through-andthrough family business, and I’m lucky to be able to work alongside not only my brother, but my parents, my uncles and my cousins who have helped us along the way especially with this transition that we had from one location to the other. I cannot say it enough we appreciate them. And not too many people can say they graduated college and get to work with family everyday living your dream. It’s truly a blessing. It’s fun. It’s dynamic, and I wouldn’t want it any other way honestly.”