The Miami Marlins have a secret weapon on their coaching staff: the man behind the torpedo bat, the early sensation of the 2025 Major League Baseball season.
It's not often a field coordinator is the biggest star on the team, but there's been a ton of attention on Aaron Leanhardt over the past week as the innovative bats he's credited with creating have taken baseball by storm. He's a former physicist with a degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (yes, that would be MIT), and he's behind what could be a hitting revolution.
It all started with his previous team, the New York Yankees, smashing the bejeezus out of the ball in their season-opening series March 27-30. Austin Wells led off their season with a home run. Paul Goldschmidt, Cody Bellinger and Aaron Judge homered on the first three pitches of their second game as part of a team-record nine-dinger day against the Milwaukee Brewers. The Yankees mashed 15 taters in the three-game series, with nine coming from players using a different style of bat (not Judge, though: He said he didn't need it, and who are we to ... well ...).
Thus began the torpedo bat era in earnest, though the style has been seen in MLB before. Suddenly teams were putting in mass orders for the new bats, and reporters were rushing to Leanhardt for an inside look at what this could mean for the sport.
“At the end of the day it’s about the batter not the bat,” Leanhardt said Monday. “It’s about the hitter and their hitting coaches. I’m happy to always help those guys get a little bit better, but ultimately it’s up to them to put good swings and grind it out every day. So credit to those guys.”
What are the torpedo bats?
Torpedo bats are simply bats that distribute the weight in the barrel differently than traditional bats. Typical bats are slim in the handle, then expand about halfway up and keep that width to the end of the barrel.
But torpedo bats slim down again closer to the end, centering the bat's weight to what's considered the sweet spot of the barrel, where hitters get the most power on their swings. It makes the bats look more like bowling pins, and it's similar to how torpedoes are designed to zip through water, hence the name. A popular theory bouncing around baseball is the torpedo bats also help increase bat speed, but the data is still inconclusive on that front.
Making these bats not as simple as just shifting more of the wood down a couple inches. Philadelphia Phillies infielder Bryson Stott explained the process of getting the bats tailored for each player, saying "it's not just a thing you can just go and order." He also explained why the bats might not be for everyone, depending on where they tend to make contact.
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