The attention of baseball fans and social media were drawn to the oddly-shaped bats of several New York Yankees players during MLB’s opening week. The Yankees kicked off their 2025 season with a dominant three-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers. The Bronx Bombers tied an MLB record, hitting 15 home runs in the opening series. Jazz Chisholm Jr., Austin Wells and Anthony Volpe launched home runs using the now infamous “torpedo bats.”
The bats were developed by Aaron Leanhardt, the Field Coordinator for the Miami Marlins. Leanhardt earned his doctorate in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, spending his free time playing shortstop in a Boston amateur baseball league.
Before joining the Marlins, Leanhardt spent six years with the Yankees in various coaching and analytical roles. During his time as a Minor League Hitting Coordinator, he interacted with several players who expressed that they made contact closer to the middle of the bat, rather than at the end. This prompted Leanhardt to craft a style of baseball bats that would eventually be used at the Major League level.
The typical baseball bat has a wider area of wood towards the end of the barrel, known as the “sweet spot.” A torpedo bat redistributes the wood so that the wider area of the barrel is located a few inches closer to the handle rather than the end. This small change allows players to make hard contact with the ball more frequently.
Early models of the torpedo bats were tested by minor leaguers, with Leanhardt using their feedback to perfect his design. Data on where different players made the most contact allowed Leanhardt to personalize the bats and improve performance.
“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,” Leanhardt said in an MLB.com interview.
When the torpedo bats began trending because of the Yankees’ home run-heavy performances, many fans accused the Yankees of cheating and receiving special treatment from the league. However, torpedo bats comply with MLB regulations and have existed in the league for years.
Going into the 2025 season, it was reported that eight of the 30 Major League teams had players using torpedo bats. After the Yankees opening series showcase, all of the remaining teams had placed orders for the bats according to Bobby Hillerich, vice president of production of Hillerich and Bradsby, a manufacturer of Louisville Slugger bats. “Every team started trying to get orders in,” Hillerich commented in an ESPN interview.
Some reactions saw fans call for the torpedo bats to be banned from baseball. Aside from increasing the home run totals in the first games of the season, the torpedo bats have also created a discussion that has outgrown the baseball community, bringing new eyes to the sport.
In a Q&A with the New York Times, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred called the bats “absolutely good for baseball.” Manfred’s tenure as commissioner has been defined by changing the rules of baseball with the aim of making the sport more watchable. A pitch clock to make the games shorter, automatic baserunners on second base to start extra-innings, even a proposed “golden at-bat” in which a manager could override the lineup once per game and send up a batter of his choice. All of these concepts were spearheaded by Manfred. While the torpedo bat is an unexpected source of interest in baseball, Manfred has welcomed the discourse with open arms.
