MIAMI -- The person holding court for Monday afternoon¡¯s largest media scrum wasn¡¯t superstars Juan Soto or Francisco Lindor, but newly nicknamed ¡°El Torpedo.¡±
Aaron Leanhardt, the Marlins¡¯ unassuming field coordinator, is the inventor of the ¡°Torpedo" bat that stole headlines following the Yankees¡¯ historic home run output over the season¡¯s opening weekend.
¡°There's a lot more cameras here today than I'm used to,¡± Leanhardt said. ¡°I'm used to being the one walking behind all this, and someone else is standing here. It's definitely been surreal for the last couple days. At the end of the day, it's about the batter, not the bat. It's about the hitters and their hitting coaches, not the hitting implements.
"So I'm happy to always help those guys get a little bit better, but ultimately, it's up to them to put good swings on pitches and grind it out every day. So, credit to those guys.¡±
So who exactly is baseball¡¯s latest visionary?
The 48-year-old Leanhardt earned a bachelor¡¯s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and a doctorate in physics from MIT. During his time at the latter, he was part of a NASA-funded research study in which scientists cooled a sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded. Leanhardt later served as a physics professor at the University of Michigan (2007-14).
If Leanhardt¡¯s involvement in baseball seems far removed from his academic background, it's worth noting he tried walking onto the Wolverines baseball team when he was a student -- but he didn¡¯t make the cut.
¡°Because I enjoyed this,¡± Leanhardt joked of the media scrum. ¡°I never got this when I was in physics, are you kidding me?¡±
Leanhardt¡¯s baseball career began in 2017, when he served as an assistant coach in New Jersey¡¯s Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League and later Montana¡¯s Dawson Community College. He was also a volunteer assistant coach for the Duluth Huskies Baseball Club of the Northwoods League in '18 before the Yankees hired him later that year. He went on to fill various capacities within the organization from Gulf Coast League hitting coach (¡®18) to Major League analyst (¡®24).
It was during Leanhardt¡¯s time as assistant Minor League hitting coordinator from 2022-23 that Yankees hitters and coaches alike came to Leanhardt for help. His primary responsibility was to integrate the use of quantitative information with on-field performance and preparation, and to act as a conduit between the analytics department and big league coaching staff.
¡°I think 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,¡± Leanhardt said. ¡°They noticed themselves that the tip was the fattest part of the bat, and then 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?¡¯
"Then, at the end of the day, you found guys that were willing to go with it. So I would say that was really the moment.¡±
Like any scientific discovery or innovative technology, the torpedo bat didn¡¯t happen overnight. In fact, the version taking the baseball world by storm needed both buy-in and time to develop. Much like the scientific method, there was experimentation followed by adjustments.
Players would provide input on design, sending Leanhardt back to the drawing board. He credits those ¡°Patient Zeroes¡± who were willing to demo the first bats in 2023-24 for today¡¯s game-changing models.
¡°It was a feedback loop,¡± Leanhardt said. ¡°There's many different makes and models that have gone through this process, some of which never saw the field of play, and some of which are, obviously, hitting a lot of home runs right now.¡±
So why did it take so long for a revolutionary invention like this during such an analytically driven age of baseball?
¡°All I can say is I was one of those smart guys for so long that they grew up swinging those old, weird-looking bats as well, right?¡± Leanhardt said. ¡°And it's not until now that maybe anyone really thought about this, myself included. You show up every day, you put the glove on you're given, you swing the bat that you're given, you put the spikes on you're given and you go about your day as best you can.
¡°And every now and then, it takes a little bit of time to question what you're doing. And so a couple years ago, some of the hitters started questioning what they were doing. And I just kind of responded to their questions.¡±