© Brad Penner/Imagn
The New York Yankees appear to have hacked the game of baseball, and they have one man in particular to thank for doing so. Through just three games, the Yankees have belted an almost unimaginable 15 home runs, tying the 2006 Detroit Tigers for the most in MLB history over that span. Thirteen of those 15 home runs came in two games over the weekend against the Milwaukee Brewers.
But there’s a catch. Or so it seems. The Yankees are under fire after it was revealed that they’re using experimental bats which shift the weight from the traditional barrel to specific sweet spots for individual hitters. By rule, it appears that New York’s new bats are entirely legal. So, how did they do it? Well, you’ll have to ask Aaron Leanhardt.
Leanhardt, a former Massachusetts Institute of Technology physicist who now works for the Miami Marlins, is credited with designing the bats while working in the Yankees organization.
“Where are you trying to hit the ball?” Aaron Leanhardt said in a phone interview with Brendan Kuty of The Athletic. “Where are you trying to make contact?”
“Really, It’s just about making the bat as heavy and as fat as possible in the area where you’re trying to do damage on the baseball,” he continued.
So, how did Leanhardt go from MIT nerd* (*complimentary) to potential New York Yankees savior?
According to his LinkedIn page, he has a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Michigan and a Ph.D. in physics from MIT. Leanhardt then served as a physics professor at the University of Michigan from 2007 to 2014.
He began coaching in the Atlantic League in 2017 and coached at a Montana community college before joining the Yankees in 2018. Leanhardt then become a “major league analyst” where the Yankees state he was “responsible for integrating the use of quantitative information with on-field performance and preparation.”
Clearly, it worked.
While it seems bizarre, more likely than anything is the fact that the Yankees just got red hot in a tiny ballpark. Sure, the bats probably have some slight advantage. But we’ll see if they continue to hit home runs at this rate all season. If they do, expect plenty of MLB teams to follow suit, and expect Leanhardt to get a handsome payday from some team in the near future.