"Torpedo Bats" inventor works for the Miami Marlins

It was an interesting opening weekend for the Miami Marlins that proved to be historic. It was historic for other teams as well, such as the New York Yankees. The Bronx Bombers went on a tear with their home runs during their opening series sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers. The unusual shape of the Yankee bats encouraged a lot of questions, and the apparently legal bats have been called "torpedo bats".

The Miami Marlins have the inventor of Torpedo Bats!

Who knew that the creator of the Torpedo Bats actually works for the Miami Marlins! Aaron Leanhardt is the field coordinator for The Fish. It should be no surprise that Leanhardt actually worked for NASA at one point! He was part of a study that cooled sodium gas to the lowest temperatures ever recorded. No, I don't know what this really means either, but it certainly sounds important!

Leanhardt later worked as a physics professor for the University of Michigan. It turns out that he always had a passion for the game of Baseball, which is why he ultimately ended up switching careers. In 2017, he was the assistant coach for the Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League in New Jersey, and later the Dawson Community College in Montana.

Aaron Leanhardt ended up being hired by the New York Yankees in 2018 as the Gulf Coast League hitting coach and then a Major League analyst in 2024. He was also a Minor League hitting coordinator for the team from 2022 to 2023. He's of course now working for the Miami Marlins. It was during his time as the Minor League hitting instructor that he came up with the concept of Torpedo Bats.

Leanhardt had this to say:

"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. 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?"

It's great that Aaron Leanhardt now works for the Miami Marlins.