Before he helped design the Yankees' viral 'torpedo' bats, Marlins field coordinator Aaron Leanhardt got his Ph.D. from MIT and was a professor at Michigan.

Before joining the Marlins, Leanhardt worked as a major-league analyst for the Yankees. Per a profile by The Athletic, Leanhardt began work on the "torpedo bat" in 2022 while a member of the Yankees' minor-league hitting department. Now the "torpedo bat" is the biggest story in baseball and one of the biggest stories in sports.

Aaron Leanhardt helped develop the first such bats with the Yankees, for whom he worked as a minor-league hitting coach and analyst.

Torpedo bats drew attention over the weekend when the New York Yankees hit a team-record nine homers in one game

Check out some of the home runs hit this season by players using torpedo bats.

On the latest Sporticast episode, hosts Scott Soshnick and Eben Novy-Williams discuss some of the biggest sports business stories of the week, including the online hysteria surrounding the ‘torpedo bats‘ in MLB.

A bat with a wider barrel sometimes referred to as a torpedo bat sits next to a normal bat during the first inning of MLB baseball game against the Washington Nationals, in Toronto, Monday, March 31,

Torpedo Bats on cards and Jackson Merrill has 8 different autograph variations in the latest edition of Above the Mantel