Latest news with #AaronLeanhardt
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Which MLB players are using the new 'torpedo' bats? Yankees lead the way, but other stars have embraced unique bat shape
The New York Yankees are already the talk of the 2025 MLB season. Following an offensive explosion — in which the team hit 15 home runs and scored 36 runs in just three games — questions emerged about the unusual bats used by some of the team's hitters. Torpedo bats are now all the rage across the league, but opinions on the bats are split. Some players are ready to experiment with the torpedo bats. Others are quick to call them a scourge. Fans — well, non-Yankees fans, at least — are furious about the development. Those who are using torpedo bats, as you might have guessed, speak highly of them. That includes New York's Giancarlo Stanton, who defended the equipment, dispelling any assertions that his early injury this season was a result of using the bats last year. What differentiates a torpedo bat from a standard bat is the shape. A torpedo bat features a thicker sweet spot — or barrel — before thinning out near the top of the bat. The shape resembles a bowling pin. And while torpedo bats look different, they are legal under MLB rules. MIT physicist Aaron Leanhardt has been credited with creating the torpedo bats. Leanhardt previously served as a hitting analyst with the Yankees before he joined the Miami Marlins as a field coordinator in the offseason. The idea came about after the team studied Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe's swing data. Analysis showed Volpe was often making contact near the label of the bat, which is closer to the thin end of a standard bat. In an effort to help Volpe, the team had bats made that moved more of the wood closer to the label, so Volpe would make better, stronger contact on his swing, as Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay explained during Saturday's game. Yankees infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. gave his insight into the torpedo bats over the weekend, saying the goal is to move wood around to where a player makes contact at higher rates. Giancarlo Stanton used torpedo bats last season, but has begun this season on the injured list. Volpe and a handful of his teammates are among the players using torpedo bats in 2025, but the Yankees aren't the only club experimenting with the bat shape. Below is a list of MLB players known to be using torpedo bats this season, and how many home runs they have. As an added bonus, Yahoo Sports fantasy baseball managers will now see a torpedo bat indicator on player pages or next to player names in their lineup if those players are using torpedo bats this season. De La Cruz used the bat for the first time in the Reds' 14-3 win over the Texas Rangers on Monday. He went 4-for-5 for two home runs and seven RBIs in the blowout win. De La Cruz said he used the bat for the first time just hours before the game. "It feels good," he said, via NBC5's Charlie Clifford. "It feels really good." While the Yankees' usage was known, a number of players on other teams have used torpedo bats in 2025. Orioles catcher Adley Rutcshman is a confirmed torpedo bat user. Both Blue Jays outfielder Davis Schneider and Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers were photographed using torpedo bats during the first three games of the season. Rays young standout Junior Caminero also used a torpedo bat early this season. The Cubs were among the teams to tinker with torpedo bats last season, Bellinger revealed, and it appears that both Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner are among the Cubs hitters using the torpedo bats in 2025. Pictures also emerged of New York Mets star Francisco Lindor using the bat, though he is 0-for-13 to start the season. The list is unlikely to stop there. Schneider's teammate Ernie Clement already said he might experiment with using a torpedo bat during games. San Diego Padres third baseman Manny Machado seemed interested in getting a shipment of the bats sent to the Padres. Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Rhys Hoskins confirmed that he already ordered a shipment and is waiting for it to arrive. Cleveland Guardians outfielder Lane Thomas doesn't appear to be using a torpedo bat, though he said the bat he uses is similar. Opinions are mixed on whether the torpedo bats are the reason for the Yankees' early season success. The five Yankees players who used torpedo bats against the Milwaukee Brewers performed extremely well, hitting a combined nine home runs in the first three games. Notably, Aaron Judge — who does not use a torpedo bat — also belted four home runs in those contests. Whether the Yankees' success was due to their bats or a combination of their small ballpark and the Brewers' poor pitching remains to be seen. But after New York's offensive explosion to open the season, you can expect to see torpedo bats making their way around all 30 clubhouses before long.
Yahoo
12-05-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
Which MLB players are using the new 'torpedo' bats? Yankees lead the way, but other stars have embraced unique bat shape
The New York Yankees are already the talk of the 2025 MLB season. Following an offensive explosion — in which the team hit 15 home runs and scored 36 runs in just three games — questions emerged about the unusual bats used by some of the team's hitters. Torpedo bats are now all the rage across the league, but opinions on the bats are split. Some players are ready to experiment with the torpedo bats. Others are quick to call them a scourge. Fans — well, non-Yankees fans, at least — are furious about the development. Those who are using torpedo bats, as you might have guessed, speak highly of them. That includes New York's Giancarlo Stanton, who defended the equipment, dispelling any assertions that his early injury this season was a result of using the bats last year. What differentiates a torpedo bat from a standard bat is the shape. A torpedo bat features a thicker sweet spot — or barrel — before thinning out near the top of the bat. The shape resembles a bowling pin. And while torpedo bats look different, they are legal under MLB rules. MIT physicist Aaron Leanhardt has been credited with creating the torpedo bats. Leanhardt previously served as a hitting analyst with the Yankees before he joined the Miami Marlins as a field coordinator in the offseason. The idea came about after the team studied Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe's swing data. Analysis showed Volpe was often making contact near the label of the bat, which is closer to the thin end of a standard bat. In an effort to help Volpe, the team had bats made that moved more of the wood closer to the label, so Volpe would make better, stronger contact on his swing, as Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay explained during Saturday's game. Yankees infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. gave his insight into the torpedo bats over the weekend, saying the goal is to move wood around to where a player makes contact at higher rates. Giancarlo Stanton used torpedo bats last season, but has begun this season on the injured list. Volpe and a handful of his teammates are among the players using torpedo bats in 2025, but the Yankees aren't the only club experimenting with the bat shape. Below is a list of MLB players known to be using torpedo bats this season, and how many home runs they have. As an added bonus, Yahoo Sports fantasy baseball managers will now see a torpedo bat indicator on player pages or next to player names in their lineup if those players are using torpedo bats this season. De La Cruz used the bat for the first time in the Reds' 14-3 win over the Texas Rangers on Monday. He went 4-for-5 for two home runs and seven RBIs in the blowout win. De La Cruz said he used the bat for the first time just hours before the game. "It feels good," he said, via NBC5's Charlie Clifford. "It feels really good." While the Yankees' usage was known, a number of players on other teams have used torpedo bats in 2025. Orioles catcher Adley Rutcshman is a confirmed torpedo bat user. Both Blue Jays outfielder Davis Schneider and Twins catcher Ryan Jeffers were photographed using torpedo bats during the first three games of the season. Rays young standout Junior Caminero also used a torpedo bat early this season. The Cubs were among the teams to tinker with torpedo bats last season, Bellinger revealed, and it appears that both Dansby Swanson and Nico Hoerner are among the Cubs hitters using the torpedo bats in 2025. Pictures also emerged of New York Mets star Francisco Lindor using the bat, though he is 0-for-13 to start the season. The list is unlikely to stop there. Schneider's teammate Ernie Clement already said he might experiment with using a torpedo bat during games. San Diego Padres third baseman Manny Machado seemed interested in getting a shipment of the bats sent to the Padres. Milwaukee Brewers first baseman Rhys Hoskins confirmed that he already ordered a shipment and is waiting for it to arrive. Cleveland Guardians outfielder Lane Thomas doesn't appear to be using a torpedo bat, though he said the bat he uses is similar. Opinions are mixed on whether the torpedo bats are the reason for the Yankees' early season success. The five Yankees players who used torpedo bats against the Milwaukee Brewers performed extremely well, hitting a combined nine home runs in the first three games. Notably, Aaron Judge — who does not use a torpedo bat — also belted four home runs in those contests. Whether the Yankees' success was due to their bats or a combination of their small ballpark and the Brewers' poor pitching remains to be seen. But after New York's offensive explosion to open the season, you can expect to see torpedo bats making their way around all 30 clubhouses before long.
Yahoo
10-04-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Moneyball for Bats
The madness started, as baseball madness tends to start, with the New York Yankees: At the end of March, during the opening weekend of the new season, the team's first three batters hit home runs on the first three pitches thrown their way. The final score, 20–9, was almost too good to be true. And then, everybody noticed the bats. A handful of Yankees had used unconventional instruments to hit their home runs: Their bats bulged out a little near the end, such that they were shaped more like bowling pins than clubs. It turned out they'd been designed by an MIT-trained physicist and were tailored to each player's swing, with the bulge positioned at the place on the bat where that player tends to hit the ball. Yes, after at least a century's worth of baseball bats that all looked more or less the same—'it must be made of wood, and may be of any length to suit the striker,' reads a set of rules from 1861—the art of making striker's wood had at last produced a major innovation. After the Yankees hit a franchise-record nine home runs in that one game, media coverage of torpedo bats exploded, and manufacturers are struggling to meet demand from other teams. Even fantasy baseball leagues have cottoned to the trend. 'This is torpedomania,' said the CEO of a major bat maker. At first glance, the craze appears to be the culmination of the data-driven tweaks that have overhauled the modern game. A pursuit of minute statistical advantages characterizes nearly every aspect of baseball today: Pitchers maximize effectiveness by throwing the ball as hard as possible, and rarely spend more than five innings in a game; managers eschew traditional—and suboptimal—strategies such as bunting and stealing bases; fans obsess over esoteric performance metrics with names such as 'wRC' and 'xFIP.' Now the data revolution is reimagining one of the game's most fundamental tools: the bat. The idea of the bowling-pin shape is actually a few years old and has been explored by multiple teams. Aaron Leanhardt, the aforementioned MIT physicist, began designing the Yankees' torpedo bats in 2022 as a minor-league hitting coach for the team, and some major leaguers were using them last year. His premise was straightforward: Standard bats are widest and heaviest at the tip, but players prefer to make contact with a pitch closer to the midpoint. That's in part because a bat's 'sweet spot'—the portion of the wood that transfers the most energy on contact—is also a few inches down the barrel from the end. To address this inefficiency, torpedo bats are made with more wood in the sweet spot and less wood elsewhere—thus, the bulge. The idea was to 'put it where you're trying to hit the ball,' Leanhardt told The Athletic. But that premise may be suspect. Despite their Moneyball makeover, torpedo bats remain, for now, a blunt instrument, largely superstition with a patina of data. Though it seems like common sense that adding heft to the part of the bat where a player hits the ball would be advantageous, several physicists who study baseball bats told me that's not necessarily true. Because a bat has a thick barrel and rotates when swung, its motion and power depend on the distribution of weight across the entire shaft, not just in one spot. In other words, the physics aren't cut-and-dried: A bulging sweet spot may provide more space for making contact with the ball, but it likely won't provide more power. (The Miami Marlins, for whom Leanhardt now works as a field coordinator, declined a request for comment.) [Read: Why aren't women allowed to play baseball?] All of the mass along a bat's barrel, not just at the point of contact, contributes to the impact. As a result, shifting some wood from the end of the barrel to the sweet spot will not make the bat more powerful, Lloyd Smith, a mechanical engineer who studies ball-bat collisions at Washington State University, told me. Brian Hillerich, the director of professional bat production at Hillerich & Bradsby Co., which makes bats for Louisville Slugger, said that even if torpedo bats are not more powerful, they still promote more consistent contact at the sweet spot, which would tend to help a player's performance. Smith and other physicists said this is possible, but remains unproved. In any case, by redistributing some mass closer to the handle, the bowling-pin design could actually make a bat feel lighter when swung—it could lower the 'moment of inertia,' in physics parlance. That will allow a player to increase his bat speed, but it also shrinks the force he can apply upon contact. These two factors may well cancel out, Dan Russell, a physicist at Penn State who studies baseball-bat vibrations, told me. (Imagine swinging a hammer while gripping its head instead of its handle: It might move faster, but it wouldn't do a better job of pounding nails.) A torpedo bat could also be constructed by adding extra wood to make the bulge instead of merely shifting it from other places on the barrel. This would keep the 'moment of inertia' constant—the bat would be heavier on a scale but feel the same when swung. Baseball bats used to have more heft as a rule; Babe Ruth swung clubs perhaps 50 percent heavier than today's. But the net effects remain unclear, and would depend on each particular player's strength and swing. A faster swing could still be useful even if it doesn't give a hitter greater power: 'You simply have better bat control, can wait a little longer on the pitch before deciding to swing, make adjustments once you've started,' Alan Nathan, who studies the physics of baseball at the University of Illinois, told me. That won't be the case for everyone—athletes who have spent years honing their swings and timing could be thrown off by the new shape, and several players using torpedo bats have had terrible starts to this season. Hillerich told me that his company designs torpedo bats with this in mind, trying to make them feel as similar to a player's original bat as possible. It might all be a matter of preference and confidence—and others may not care that much either way. The new shape feels the same in his hands, Jazz Chisholm, a torpedo-wielding Yankee, recently said. 'I don't know the science of it. I'm just playing baseball.' That the Yankees had a historically great game, and that some players were using funny-looking bats, 'is more coincidence than destiny or science,' Smith told me. After all, nobody noticed the new shape last season, and for good reason—there's simply not enough information, either from MLB games or physics labs, to definitively say what these bats offer, and to which players. Smith said he suspects that 'the number of athletes this torpedo bat benefits is going to be fairly narrow.' Indeed, the current buzz about the bats is pretty much the opposite of being data-driven. In an interview last week with The Athletic, Brett Laxton, the lead bat maker at Marucci Sports, pointed to the fact that Giancarlo Stanton, the Yankees' designated hitter, had hit three home runs in his first game using a torpedo bat last year. That was 'a good eye test' of the technology, he said, invoking just the kind of baseball intuition that statistics-driven analysts would sneer at. Yes, the bat felt and looked good in Stanton's hands; no, this is not sabermetrics. Meanwhile, other 'eye tests' have yielded more ambiguous results. Elly de la Cruz, of the Cincinnati Reds, hit two home runs in his first game using the torpedo bat, for instance, then went 0–4 the next day. Max Muncy, of the Los Angeles Dodgers, tried using a torpedo bat and recorded three outs in a row, then switched back to his old wood and hit a game-tying double. If anything, the torpedo bats harken to an era before Moneyball, computers, or even the official formation of Major League Baseball. The late 1800s were a time of 'great experimentation' in bat design, John Thorn, MLB's official historian, told me: four-sided bats and flat bats, bats with slits for springs and sliding weights. All of that tinkering has long been left behind, however, and the modern, non-torpedo bat now seems like a simple fact of the game. Perhaps the biggest change to bat manufacturing in recent decades happened in the 1990s, when Barry Bonds started swinging bats made from maple instead of ash, and the rest of the league followed. That, too, had an element of superstition: As it turns out, a bat made from maple wood transfers a little bit less energy to a ball than one made from ash. Bonds, who hit more home runs than any MLB player in history, 'could have hit the ball just a bit further if he had stayed with ash,' Smith told me. Thorn takes issue with the whole discussion. 'The whole idea that the magic is in the bat rather than in the batter is fraud,' Thorn said. 'It's calumny.' Of course, baseball players and fans have always been in pursuit of magic. They once used less pretentious tricks—eating chicken before each game, wearing a gold thong to emerge from a funk—but these have now been funneled through the optimization craze; instead of mismatched socks, there are 'literal genius'–designed bats. In an era when baseball teams will squeeze any source of data for tiny statistical advantages, torpedomania pretends to be yet another nerd-ish secret weapon. Perhaps, for some subset of players, the new design really is miraculous. More likely, though, when the stats have all been counted and compared, we'll discover that the torpedo bat is no different from any other talisman in baseball: a ridiculous distraction; a delightful waste of time. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Atlantic
10-04-2025
- Science
- Atlantic
Moneyball for Bats
The madness started, as baseball madness tends to start, with the New York Yankees: At the end of March, during the opening weekend of the new season, the team's first three batters hit home runs on the first three pitches thrown their way. The final score, 20–9, was almost too good to be true. And then, everybody noticed the bats. A handful of Yankees had used unconventional instruments to hit their home runs: Their bats bulged out a little near the end, such that they were shaped more like bowling pins than clubs. It turned out they'd been designed by an MIT-trained physicist and were tailored to each player's swing, with the bulge positioned at the place on the bat where that player tends to hit the ball. Yes, after at least a century's worth of baseball bats that all looked more or less the same—'it must be made of wood, and may be of any length to suit the striker,' reads a set of rules from 1861—the art of making striker's wood had at last produced a major innovation. After the Yankees hit a franchise-record nine home runs in that one game, media coverage of torpedo bats exploded, and manufacturers are struggling to meet demand from other teams. Even fantasy baseball leagues have cottoned to the trend. 'This is torpedomania,' said the CEO of a major bat maker. At first glance, the craze appears to be the culmination of the data-driven tweaks that have overhauled the modern game. A pursuit of minute statistical advantages characterizes nearly every aspect of baseball today: Pitchers maximize effectiveness by throwing the ball as hard as possible, and rarely spend more than five innings in a game; managers eschew traditional—and suboptimal—strategies such as bunting and stealing bases; fans obsess over esoteric performance metrics with names such as 'wRC' and 'xFIP.' Now the data revolution is reimagining one of the game's most fundamental tools: the bat. The idea of the bowling-pin shape is actually a few years old and has been explored by multiple teams. Aaron Leanhardt, the aforementioned MIT physicist, began designing the Yankees' torpedo bats in 2022 as a minor-league hitting coach for the team, and some major leaguers were using them last year. His premise was straightforward: Standard bats are widest and heaviest at the tip, but players prefer to make contact with a pitch closer to the midpoint. That's in part because a bat's 'sweet spot'—the portion of the wood that transfers the most energy on contact—is also a few inches down the barrel from the end. To address this inefficiency, torpedo bats are made with more wood in the sweet spot and less wood elsewhere—thus, the bulge. The idea was to 'put it where you're trying to hit the ball,' Leanhardt told The Athletic. But that premise may be suspect. Despite their Moneyball makeover, torpedo bats remain, for now, a blunt instrument, largely superstition with a patina of data. Though it seems like common sense that adding heft to the part of the bat where a player hits the ball would be advantageous, several physicists who study baseball bats told me that's not necessarily true. Because a bat has a thick barrel and rotates when swung, its motion and power depend on the distribution of weight across the entire shaft, not just in one spot. In other words, the physics aren't cut-and-dried: A bulging sweet spot may provide more space for making contact with the ball, but it likely won't provide more power. (The Miami Marlins, for whom Leanhardt now works as a field coordinator, declined a request for comment.) Read: Why aren't women allowed to play baseball? All of the mass along a bat's barrel, not just at the point of contact, contributes to the impact. As a result, shifting some wood from the end of the barrel to the sweet spot will not make the bat more powerful, Lloyd Smith, a mechanical engineer who studies ball-bat collisions at Washington State University, told me. Brian Hillerich, the director of professional bat production at Hillerich & Bradsby Co., which makes bats for Louisville Slugger, said that even if torpedo bats are not more powerful, they still promote more consistent contact at the sweet spot, which would tend to help a player's performance. Smith and other physicists said this is possible, but remains unproved. In any case, by redistributing some mass closer to the handle, the bowling-pin design could actually make a bat feel lighter when swung—it could lower the 'moment of inertia,' in physics parlance. That will allow a player to increase his bat speed, but it also shrinks the force he can apply upon contact. These two factors may well cancel out, Dan Russell, a physicist at Penn State who studies baseball-bat vibrations, told me. (Imagine swinging a hammer while gripping its head instead of its handle: It might move faster, but it wouldn't do a better job of pounding nails.) A torpedo bat could also be constructed by adding extra wood to make the bulge instead of merely shifting it from other places on the barrel. This would keep the 'moment of inertia' constant—the bat would be heavier on a scale but feel the same when swung. Baseball bats used to have more heft as a rule; Babe Ruth swung clubs perhaps 50 percent heavier than today's. But the net effects remain unclear, and would depend on each particular player's strength and swing. A faster swing could still be useful even if it doesn't give a hitter greater power: 'You simply have better bat control, can wait a little longer on the pitch before deciding to swing, make adjustments once you've started,' Alan Nathan, who studies the physics of baseball at the University of Illinois, told me. That won't be the case for everyone—athletes who have spent years honing their swings and timing could be thrown off by the new shape, and several players using torpedo bats have had terrible starts to this season. Hillerich told me that his company designs torpedo bats with this in mind, trying to make them feel as similar to a player's original bat as possible. It might all be a matter of preference and confidence—and others may not care that much either way. The new shape feels the same in his hands, Jazz Chisholm, a torpedo-wielding Yankee, recently said. 'I don't know the science of it. I'm just playing baseball.' That the Yankees had a historically great game, and that some players were using funny-looking bats, 'is more coincidence than destiny or science,' Smith told me. After all, nobody noticed the new shape last season, and for good reason—there's simply not enough information, either from MLB games or physics labs, to definitively say what these bats offer, and to which players. Smith said he suspects that 'the number of athletes this torpedo bat benefits is going to be fairly narrow.' Indeed, the current buzz about the bats is pretty much the opposite of being data-driven. In an interview last week with The Athletic, Brett Laxton, the lead bat maker at Marucci Sports, pointed to the fact that Giancarlo Stanton, the Yankees' designated hitter, had hit three home runs in his first game using a torpedo bat last year. That was 'a good eye test' of the technology, he said, invoking just the kind of baseball intuition that statistics-driven analysts would sneer at. Yes, the bat felt and looked good in Stanton's hands; no, this is not sabermetrics. Meanwhile, other 'eye tests' have yielded more ambiguous results. Elly de la Cruz, of the Cincinnati Reds, hit two home runs in his first game using the torpedo bat, for instance, then went 0–4 the next day. Max Muncy, of the Los Angeles Dodgers, tried using a torpedo bat and recorded three outs in a row, then switched back to his old wood and hit a game-tying double. If anything, the torpedo bats harken to an era before Moneyball, computers, or even the official formation of Major League Baseball. The late 1800s were a time of 'great experimentation' in bat design, John Thorn, MLB's official historian, told me: four-sided bats and flat bats, bats with slits for springs and sliding weights. All of that tinkering has long been left behind, however, and the modern, non-torpedo bat now seems like a simple fact of the game. Perhaps the biggest change to bat manufacturing in recent decades happened in the 1990s, when Barry Bonds started swinging bats made from maple instead of ash, and the rest of the league followed. That, too, had an element of superstition: As it turns out, a bat made from maple wood transfers a little bit less energy to a ball than one made from ash. Bonds, who hit more home runs than any MLB player in history, 'could have hit the ball just a bit further if he had stayed with ash,' Smith told me. Thorn takes issue with the whole discussion. 'The whole idea that the magic is in the bat rather than in the batter is fraud,' Thorn said. 'It's calumny.' Of course, baseball players and fans have always been in pursuit of magic. They once used less pretentious tricks—eating chicken before each game, wearing a gold thong to emerge from a funk—but these have now been funneled through the optimization craze; instead of mismatched socks, there are ' literal genius '–designed bats. In an era when baseball teams will squeeze any source of data for tiny statistical advantages, torpedomania pretends to be yet another nerd-ish secret weapon. Perhaps, for some subset of players, the new design really is miraculous. More likely, though, when the stats have all been counted and compared, we'll discover that the torpedo bat is no different from any other talisman in baseball: a ridiculous distraction; a delightful waste of time.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- Sport
- Yahoo
These Yankees' bats are a MLB baseball hit. Who makes the new torpedo bat? Can you buy one?
If you buy something through a link in this article, we may earn commission. Pricing and availability subject to change. These Yankees' bats are a MLB baseball hit. Who makes the new torpedo bat? Can you buy one? Torpedo bats are the explosive new trend in baseball after the New York Yankees set a franchise record Saturday, hitting nine home runs — the first four of which were back to back to back to back — for a 20-9 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers. The game sent shockwaves across Major League Baseball. Other MLB teams have since placed an influx of orders with Hillerich & Bradsby, the Louisville-based company that makes Louisville Slugger bats and created the torpedo bats used by Yankee players over the weekend. Advertisement But are torpedo bats legal? And how can you get one of your own? Here's what we know. Story continues after photo gallery. What is a torpedo bat? Unlike a traditional swatter, a torpedo bat has more wood at the barrel, closer toward the label. This creates a larger area at the spot where players make contact with the ball. A torpedo bat resembles something of an elongated bowling pin. The talk of baseball: Louisville Slugger shows how the torpedo bat came to be Who invented the torpedo bat? Aaron Leanhardt, a former MIT physicist who worked as the Yankees' lead analyst in 2024, is credited with inventing the torpedo-style barrel. Leanhardt's idea was fashioned into reality with help from Hillerich & Bradsby. The company worked with four pro baseball teams for about 18 months to design the torpedo bat. Advertisement Batting engineer Brian Hillerich, according to the Louisville Courier-Journal, went through about five iterations of the torpedo bat before they found one just right for Yankee outfielder Cody Bellinger, who earned his first home run as a Yankee over the weekend. Are the torpedo bats legal? Yes, there's nothing illegal about using a torpedo bat, according to the MLB. Here's the rule: The bat shall be a smooth, round stick not more than 2.61 inches in diameter at the thickest part and not more than 42 inches in length. The bat shall be one piece of solid wood. NOTE: No laminated or experimental bats shall be used in a professional game (either championship season or exhibition games) until the manufacturer has secured approval from Major League Baseball of his design and methods of manufacture. Story continues after photo gallery. What have opponents said about the Yankees' torpedo bats? So far, we've got this from Brewers pitcher Trevor Megill: 'I think it's terrible. We'll see what the data says. I've never seen anything like it before. I feel like it's something used in slow-pitch softball. It's genius: put the mass all in one spot. It might be bush-[league]. It might not be. But it's the Yankees, so they'll let it slide.' Is every Yankees hitter using the torpedo bats? Nope. Aaron Judge is sticking with his usual bat, which makes sense: Where to buy torpedo bats Torpedo bats are a hit and some fans might want to get their hands on one. According to the Courier-Journal, Hillerich & Bradsby are planning a limited retail edition of torpedo bats to be released before the end of April. Since the bat is a shape, it's not eligible for a patent, Brian Hillerich said. Advertisement In the meantime, other retailers have swooped in to capitalize off baseball's newest craze. Torpedo bats are available for sale from outlets that include Marucci Sports, RPG Authentic Bats, and Victus. How much is a torpedo bat? They're not cheap. Torpedo bats listed in the online retailers IndyStar reviewed run in price from $169 to $225. More about torpedo bats: Louisville Slugger shows how the torpedo bat came to be When do the New York Yankees play next? The Yankees (and presumably their torpedo bats) will face the Arizona Diamondbacks on Wednesday at 7:05 p.m. Eastern at Yankee Stadium. You can stream the game at Fubo. Watch the New York Yankees get four homers in a row Watch Yankees vs. Diamondbacks on Fubo Advertisement Louisville Courier-Journal enterprise reporter Stephanie Kuzydym contributed to this article John Tufts covers trending news for IndyStar and Midwest Connect. Send him a news tip at JTufts@ Find him on BlueSky at JohnWritesStuff. This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: What are torpedo bats? Are they banned in MLB? Marucci, Victus sell them
