A revolutionary new bat design is making waves across Major League Baseball after the New York Yankees tied a league record with 15 home runs in their first three games, including nine from players using the innovative "bowling pin" style bat. The bat has also been nicknamed the "torpedo bat."
The unconventional design, which redistributes weight from the end of the bat toward the barrel area where major league players typically make contact, was conceived by Aaron Leanhardt, a former Yankees minor league hitting coordinator with a background as an MIT-educated physics professor.
Leanhardt developed the concept while addressing player frustrations about how to counter increasingly dominant pitching. His solution: optimize the "wood budget" of a bat by concentrating weight in the sweet spot, creating a tapered end that resembles a bowling pin.
"This bat is just trying to say: What if we put the mass where the ball is going to hit so that we have an optimized equation of mass and velocity?" explained Scott Drake, president of PFS-TECO, a laboratory that inspects MLB bats.
Five Yankees who adopted the design—Jazz Chisholm Jr., Anthony Volpe, Austin Wells, Cody Bellinger, and Paul Goldschmidt—combined for nine home runs during the season's opening weekend, immediately attracting attention from players around the league and sparking controversy among some opponents.
Milwaukee Brewers reliever Trevor Megill compared the bats to "something used in slow-pitch softball" after watching his team surrender multiple homers. Despite the complaints, the bats comply with MLB's specifications for shape, barrel size and length.
Giancarlo Stanton, one of the earliest adopters, used the design during last year's postseason when he hit seven home runs in 14 games. His success served as proof of concept for other players.
The physics behind the bat involves a delicate balance. By concentrating mass where contact occurs, the bat theoretically produces higher exit velocities on well-hit balls. While mishits may produce weaker results than traditional models, the trade-off appears worthwhile for many hitters.
"Every penny counts," said Leanhardt, who now works as major league field coordinator for the Miami Marlins. "The fact of the matter is you want your barrels to count the most."
Early data shows bat velocity increases among Yankees players using the design, with shortstop Anthony Volpe seeing the most significant gain at more than 3 mph over last year.
The innovation represents a significant development in bat technology, potentially comparable to the shift from ash to maple bats a generation ago. As average pitch velocities have increased—from an estimated 85 mph in Babe Ruth's era to around 95 mph today—bat weights have decreased accordingly, with players constantly seeking advantages.
"The bat is such a unique tool," said Minnesota Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers, who has experimented with the design. "You look at the history of the game, and they used to swing telephone poles. Now you try to optimize it."
While the sample size remains small, the Yankees' opening weekend power display has ensured rapid proliferation of the design. According to industry sources, the Marlins, Cubs, and Orioles have also invested significantly in bat geometry research.
"There's going to be a lot more teams wanting to swing them," Jeffers predicted, "because of what the Yankees did this weekend."
Baseball Wiretap RSS Feed