Aaron Leanhardt's Problem-Solving Approach: Revolutionizing Baseball with the Torpedo Bat

I have every reason to dislike this guy, but I don't. Name a sports team I am passionate about, and he has connections to the biggest rivals. I'm an Ohio State fan; he taught at the University of Michigan for seven years. I'm a fan of the Boston Red Sox; he worked for the New York Yankees.

It is as an employee of the New York Yankees that he's landed on my radar. Though in fairness, Aaron Leanhardt, as of this season, is a coach for the Miami Marlins. But before he left the Big Apple, Leanhardt unleashed the torpedo bat on the world, and baseball may never be the same.

Or at least the bats may never be the same.

Even if you're not a sports fan, there is a lot to learn from Leanhardt. And that goes beyond the new design of baseball bats that he has created. Described by one former major leaguer as "the most interesting man in baseball," that is a title that isn't much of an exaggeration.

Aaron Leanhardt's resume includes being on the team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) that cooled sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded back in 2003.

In an article in the Wall Street Journal, one of Leanhardt's professors at MIT, Nobel Prize winner Wolfgang Ketterle, called him "one of the handful of absolutely outstanding students" that he had ever taught in 30 years.

What I love about this story is his approach to solving a problem that we can all learn from. Bats used in professional baseball have had only a small amount of incremental changes in my lifetime. It would be easy to suggest that this tool has been optimized through decades of use with positive results. Why spend time working on a solution when there is no problem?

It's simple physics.

As a hitter, your goal is to hit the baseball in the 'sweet spot' in the barrel of the bat. Through analysis, Leanhardt determined that the 'sweet spot' was actually closer to the handle of the bat than most people realized. A redistribution of the wood used in Major League bats to match the design with the science has resulted in a different look, but also different results.

The torpedo bat during the opening weekend of baseball knocked it out of the park, literally. The New York Yankees belted a Major League record 15 home runs in the first three games of the season, with most of those round-trippers coming from the newly designed bats.

I don't love that the New York Yankees are the ones benefiting from this design. In fact, my goal every year is for the Yanks to go 0-162 in the regular season. But I have to give them credit for backing this new approach and the problem-solving methods used.

New York Yankees' Jazz Chisholm Jr. holding the newly designed back from Aaron Leanhardt during the opening weekend of the 2025 MLB season. Photo credit to Pamela Smith, AP Photo.

Leanhardt's approach was to look at the given parameters - there are specific rules within MLB's rulebook on bat design, and hitters couldn't lose bat speed as a result of a new design.

Playing within the necessary guidelines, Leanhardt built the better mousetrap. It is a good lesson for all of us that even long-standing approaches should be reexamined. By injecting pertinent data into design, staying within the specified guidelines, and paying attention to necessary user experience information, you can reimagine a long-standing process and bring unheard-of new results.

Next time, hopefully, it won't be for the Yankees.