Professional baseball hasn’t  changed much in 150 years or so.

How far you can hit a ball with a wooden stick, how fast you can run 90 feet to the base  after hitting the ball with the stick, how fast the other guys can throw the  ball back while you’re doing that … There’s only so much you can do  to improve on any of that stuff. And then the Yankees hit 15  home runs in one weekend.

Something happened to break the game wide open. And that something … was physics. Here’s how one guy – maybe – broke baseball. [intro music] March 29th, 2025.

The American  League Champion New York Yankees are looking to defend their  title in a brand new season. Paul Goldschmidt swings at the very  first pitch and hits it out of the park. On the next pitch, Cody Bellinger also goes yard.

And right behind him, Aaron Judge takes the Milwaukee Brewers deep on their third pitch of the game. Three pitches. Three home runs.

What the heck is going on? The Yankees would go on to  hit nine of them in that game and fifteen over the course of the weekend. If you don’t watch much baseball, dear viewer, allow me to clarify -- That is a lot.

But take a closer look at the equipment  some of these Bronx Bombers are packing, and you might think they showed  up to play the wrong sport. Is that a baseball bat or a bowling pin? In fact, it’s a so-called torpedo bat, and it uses the laws of physics to give players a never-seen-before edge when hitting.

It’s here thanks to Aaron Leanhardt, a former physics professor and MIT PhD, who introduced the bat to the Yankees  before moving on to the Miami Marlins. And it’s completely legal by the  rules of Major League Baseball. The rules specify how wide a  bat can be at its widest point, and everybody always just sort of assumed  that point was the end of the bat.

It doesn’t have to be. And that unlocks some room for real creativity, if you understand the physics of hitting. First, removing some mass from the end of the bat will naturally change its weight distribution.

Babe Ruth famously favored heavy  bats weighing over 40 ounces, around 1.1 kilograms. But most players these days prefer  lighter bats that they can swing faster – around 31 or 32 ounces, or less than a kilogram. Torpedo bats are customized  to the player using them, and they put most of the weight  of the bat where that player is statistically most likely to make contact.

That lets him hit harder  without losing swing speed. Speed is important, not only because  that lets the player transfer momentum to the ball and make it go farther and faster. It also gives him just a fraction  of a second longer to decide whether and where to swing.

And when the ball is coming at  you at a hundred miles an hour, that makes a big difference. There’s another consequence to making the  player’s favored part of the bat bigger, relatively speaking, and it’s that it’s bigger. Stay with me – you’re increasing the relative surface  area of the best part of the bat, and that gives you more space to make contact.

But it’s not just about making the good  part of the bat take up more space. Torpedo bats also enhance  the size of the “sweet spot.” This is the part of the bat that transfers  momentum to the ball most efficiently, so the player doesn’t feel the bat  “jam” or transfer recoil to his hands. That maximizes the energy that  goes into propelling the ball, hopefully out of the park.

What this all adds up to is a  bat tailor-made for each player   to capitalize on his individual hitting abilities, and supercharge them using  the laws of physics. Nice! There is a slight trade-off, however.

It’s not like every single hit a player  makes is off that middle part of the bat, and it’s not unusual to see a guy hit  one off the very end of the barrel. Torpedo bats make that more difficult. Of course, hitters in baseball have been looking   for a way to improve their  offense pretty much forever.

So it begs the question of why  we’re only seeing this now. While similar bats appear to have been used  before in the Korea Baseball Organization, they were unheard of in the major leagues. And it seems to be a result of  Leanhardt listening to his players and applying his physics know-how to  figure out what would work for them.

But there’s another reason. I said earlier that baseball doesn’t change  much, but that’s not completely true. Over the last ten years or so,  pitchers have been getting better.

Nolan Ryan is sometimes credited with  throwing the fastest pitch of all time at 108 miles per hour, though experts are skeptical of that figure. In the era of modern measurements, which only goes back about a decade, no one has ever hurled a fastball that hit 106, and only an elite few have broken 105. However, the number of pitchers who can  throw a hundred consistently has increased.

And that’s due to improvements in training, as well as statistics that  show fast fastballs are good – so coaches, trainers, and  managers seek them out more. Throwing a major league pitch is a nearly  superhuman feat, and it involves the entire body. A pitch doesn’t start with the pitcher’s arm, but rather with his feet as he generates force with his entire body up through  his hips, torso, and shoulders.

Even gravity gets an assist, as the pitcher starts his throw  from the top of an elevated mound and uses the descent to increase velocity. As pitching coaches learn  how to perfect this process, more and more pitchers can  throw faster and faster. That 106 mile-an-hour barrier  probably won’t last forever.

And while this can lead to more injuries, you guessed it, sports physicians are getting  better at treating those too, and making sure players can come back healthy. This kind of pitching dominance  makes it harder and harder for hitters to maintain consistent scoring. All I'm sayng, If you gave me a stick and threw a ball at me at a hundred miles an hour, I would not hit the ball.

I would cry. So it’s no wonder players would  turn to goofy-looking bowling pins to improve their batting average. Though… these bats may not be having quite  the impact it first seemed like they would.

Sure, balls were flying out of the Bronx  that weekend like airplanes out of JFK. ... which technically in Queens. But things calmed down a little after that. It’s starting to look like the advantage  provided by torpedo bats is a marginal one, even if the physics do check out.

That said, the bats are probably here to stay, because in an era of pitching dominance,  hitters will take what they can get. The Yankees led baseball in home  runs at the time we wrote this, in the middle of May 2025. But  it was still early in the season, and the Dodgers were breathing down their necks – having barely touched torpedo bats.

And there’s more to hitting  than just the bat you use. The skill of the player still  has to factor into the equation. Though… baseball players can  be a superstitious bunch.

A struggling hitter might see a fancy  new bat as the solution to his woes, while a player doing well might  not want to take any chances. Like, Yankees superstar Aaron Judge hit three of the nine home runs that  day in March with a conventional bat, and he doesn’t plan to change a thing. [ outro ]