“Incoming! Take cover!” That has been heard at ballparks around the game this year, especially wherever the New York Yankees are playing.

The Yankees hit 15 home runs in their season-opening series against the Milwaukee Brewers. That eye-popping number was the result of a combination of bad pitching by Milwaukee and good hitting by the Yankees. But it also could be due to the “torpedo bats” that are the talk of baseball at the moment.

The bats are the brainchild of former Yankees hitting analyst Aaron Leanhardt. Leanhardt was an MIT-educated physicist who was also a physics professor at the University of Michigan. He is now the Miami Marlins field coordinator. He is moving up the ranks quickly, and I suspect this recent attention and attachment to torpedo bats may get him more promotions.

When with the Yankees, Leanhardt noticed that shortstop Anthony Volpe was consistently making contact near the trademark on his bat. This is an area below the sweet spot, which is the name given to area of the bat optimal for barreling pitches with the hardest contact.

He then studied other hitters and realized that every hitter was different as was every swing and each hitter has his own unique point of contact. So Leanhardt and others with the Yankees reached out to the companies that were making their players’ bats to see if they could manipulate the production process within the allowable rules to extend the sweet spot further down the bat away from the top. Effectively, they wanted........

© TSN