The New York Yankees are making headlines because of their new “torpedo bats.” While only a few players use the innovative bats, many baseball fans are calling for their ban. The Yankees smashed a franchise record with nine home runs in a single game against the Milwaukee Brewers, scoring 20 runs. However, it seems like more eyes are on the scientifically designed baseball bats.

Fans won’t get exactly what they want because the MLB announced that the bats are, in fact, legal. There is discourse online about the Yankees “bending the rules,” despite the league saying it’s okay. All thanks go to the team’s former MIT-educated physicist for designing the new lumber prior to the 2025 season, which resulted in nine home runs in one game and 15 altogether over the weekend.

Torpedo Bats

Former Yankee’s analyst Aaron Leanhardt (Lenny), who left the team following the 2024 season and is now a field coordinator with the Miami Marlins, is an MIT-educated physicist who was brought in to “fix” the team’s analytics a few years ago. Fast-forward to the start of the 2025 season, and Lenny helped innovate one of the oldest pieces of sports equipment: the baseball bat.

Baseball is a tradition-heavy sport with many traditional fans. The new torpedo bat is anything but traditional, so it’s no surprise that the innovation has its critics.

The MIT grad, Lenny, saw an opportunity to change the baseball bat. It’s pretty simple, the torpedo bats have more wood, thus more weight, in the area of the bat where the batter is most likely to hit the ball. According to the MLB, the bat is specifically designed to maximize the potential power on any given swing.

Former Yankees player Kevin Smith added some insight on the bat and Lenny’s innovative idea.

“MLB has rules on bats, like what the weight drop can be, what the density of the wood can be, and how big the barrel can be. Most guys are using bats that aren’t even close to maxing out the barrel size,” he said. “When Lenny measured my barrel compared to what’s ‘allowed,’ I was shocked.”

“Obviously, it’s not going to make you an elite hitter if you aren’t already (I tried),” Smith added. “But for the best in the world, any slight advantage could be the difference. It’s cool to see more people using them, Lenny was always amazed it wasn’t already a thing.”

An MIT Mind

Lenny, an MIT grad, spent seven years at the University of Michigan as a physics professor before leaving academia to get into sports. When Lenny joined the Yankees, his job was to solve a pitching problem. See, pitching in baseball is at an all-time high; pitchers are just too good. Lenny sought out a solution to that.

When he asked the Yankees hitters what they needed, the answer was, in short, more contact.

As a result, Lenny helped develop one of the most innovative baseball bats since switching from forsook ash bats to maple in the 1990s. Maple bats reportedly generate more power than ash. The new bat redistributes the weight from the end of the bat towards the middle, where most batters make contact with the ball.

The new bat is a lesson in physics. An ESPN article says, “If the length and weight of bats are constants, the distribution of mass is the variable, and Leanhardt conceived of a bat that optimizes both so it can do the most damage.”

Sure, the bat looks a little silly, but it may be the solution the organization was looking for from the MIT genius.