New "torpedo" baseball bats are making waves across America's national pastime, triggering an explosion of home runs in the first full week of the Major League Baseball season.
The New York Yankees blasted an MLB record-tying 15 home runs in their first three games of the season, in part due to the new bats, which have shifted the sweet spot of the barrel closer to the hitter's hands.
The groundbreaking, customized new design has given extra home run power to batters -- and added a new challenge for top MLB pitchers.
There's more wood mass concentrated in the area where bats are most likely to make contact with pitched balls -- six inches or so closer to the batter's hands -- but the bats conform to MLB rules. They just have more punch at the impact point compared to more traditional bats.
"The concept makes so much sense. I know I'm bought in," Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe told the MLB's website. "The bigger you can have the barrel where you hit the ball, it makes sense to me."
Volpe, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Cody Bellinger, Paul Goldschmidt and Austin Wells combined to smash nine of the New York's impressive 15 homers with torpedo bats while star slugger Aaron Judge hit four and Ben Rice and Oswaldo Peraza each added one with traditional bats.
"As my career goes on, maybe I could start adding some of those in if I start losing something," Judge said. "But I think we're good where we’re at right now."
Nine homers against Milwaukee on Saturday -- including three consecutive home runs off the first three pitches of the game -- were followed by four on Sunday.
"We were all kind of looking at this bat, and we were like, 'Hmm, what is this thing?'" Bellinger said. "It's so unique. I think there has been some more success with it and maybe some more advancements.
"The benefit for me is I like the weight distribution," Bellinger said. "The weight is closer to my hands so I feel as if it's lighter in a way. For me, that was the biggest benefit."
Cincinnati's Elly De La Cruz hit two homers Monday with a torpedo bat in a 14-3 rout of Texas after testing it for the first time in pre-game batting practice.
"I just wanted to know if it feels good," he said. "It definitely does."
The specialized bats were created by 48-year-old Aaron Leanhardt, a former MIT physicist who served as a Yankees minor league hitting coordinator in 2022 and 2023 and a Yankees batting analyst last year before moving into a role as field coordinator this year for the Miami Marlins.
"I think Lenny was working really hard at it," Volpe said of Leanhardt. "Every time I'm on base, guys are asking about it."
Leanhardt said his tinkering with bat styles began when players noticed the top of the bat was fattest but that wasn't where on the bat they were trying to hit the ball.
"The eureka moment, really, was when players pointed to where they were trying to hit the ball, and they noticed themselves that that was not the fattest part of the bat," said Leanhardt.
"Everyone just looked at each other like, 'Well, let's flip it around. It's going to look silly, but are we willing to go with it?' You found guys that were willing to go with it. So I would say that was really the moment."
Leanhardt credited a "feedback loop" of informed tinkering ...
