FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Oct. 13, 2025
ARIZONA FALL LEAGUE MONDAY FEATURE
Aaron Leanhardt’s Long Journey to Manager of the AFL’s Mesa Solar Sox
PHOENIX – In March, Aaron Leanhardt stood on the field at LoanDepot Park in Miami, Florida, surrounded by national media, to talk about his creation of the “Torpedo” bat. Seven months later, Leanhardt is taking on a different role in baseball as a manager in the Arizona Fall League with the Mesa Solar Sox.
“I’m used to walking behind (the media) and not being in front of (media),” Leanhardt said. “(The “Torpedo” bat coverage) was a surreal experience, something I’m just really grateful and lucky that I got to be a part of, got to do something positive, because someday I’m going to mess something up, and all (the media) are going to come for me, at least I’m a little more prepared now.”
When taking a look at Leanhardt’s resumé, it isn’t hard to see all the different stops the 48-year-old has had along the way.
Leanhardt received a bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan and a doctorate in physics from MIT. While in college, he participated in a NASA-funded research study in which scientists cooled a sodium gas to the lowest temperature ever recorded.
After college, he taught as a physics professor at his alma mater, the University of Michigan, from 2007 to 2014. With an itch to work in baseball, Leanhardt switched his focus to the sport in 2017, working as an assistant coach in New Jersey’s Atlantic Collegiate Baseball League and Dawson Community College in Glendive, Montana.
To continue his climb in baseball, he worked as a volunteer assistant coach for the Duluth Huskies Baseball Club of the Northwoods League in 2018 before shifting to a role with the New York Yankees as a Minor League hitting coach in May of that year.
The current Mesa manager spent three seasons in the role, getting promoted to assistant Minor League hitting coordinator in 2022. In almost two years in the role, he moved his way up to an MLB analyst for the Yankees in 2024.
His time with the Yankees was when Leanhardt thought of the well-known “Torpedo” bat, using players’ input to tweak the design throughout 2023-24. The bat wasn’t used by MLB players until the 2025 season, when Leanhardt had switched organizations to the Miami Marlins as a field coordinator.
Now, Leanhardt is leading an AFL team as manager to continue to add to his roles throughout baseball. While his roles have all been different, from a college professor to a baseball manager, he has taken away lessons to make his team successful.
“Whether it’s about coaching or teaching, is that when I would teach a class like now, you coach a team, it’s like all the players have these different experiences then somehow for this season, this course you’re teaching or this season you’re running, all these different experiences come together for that semester or that season then they all go their separate ways at the end of it all,” Leanhardt said. “I think what I learned as a teacher is that you have to lean into all the various experiences that your students have, so I try to do that with the players as well. At the same time, try to offer that external experience that I might have to them, so when they go their separate ways, they get that little piece that they might not have had otherwise.”
Due to Leanhardt’s background, watching a baseball game can be different for him. With taking on the role as an analyst for the Yankees, then moving to a coordinator position with the Marlins, he typically watches baseball in a much broader way than a typical coach.
“How are all the little things that don’t show up in the box score are actually affecting the outcome of the game,” Leanhardt said. “As time has gone on, or as my position’s evolved, I’ve looked at it a lot broader than maybe when I had a more specific role like hitting coaches, pitching coaches, infield coaches, whatever, they probably watch it through that kind of lens that’s specific to the role.”
The opportunity to broaden his horizons and see all the aspects of baseball has been exciting for Leanhardt. He wants to emphasize doing the little things that don’t show up on a box score correctly for the Solar Sox to create a winning AFL team.
The manager is in a rare position with his analytical background, where he can apply his mind and experience to help his players.
“The game has moved into the direction where you are trying to balance some of the experience and feel what the players have because they are out there on the field every day with some of the data and analytics that all the cameras and computers produce,” Leanhardt said. “The better you can merge those two things, the better the results are going to be on the field.
“I would say that I’ve been fortunate enough to work in both those areas where I can do as best job I can to try to assimilate and merge those things together.”
Working as a manager has even given Leanhardt the chance to see his current players use his “Torpedo” bat in Mesa, with around a third of the team using his invention. During the offseason, he is expecting players to explore the option of shifting to using the bat, with growing media attention on it.
“I think this offseason will be a big offseason to explore options with it even more,” Leanhardt said. “I think you’re going to end up seeing a lot more guys explore options this offseason, and we’ll just see how many guys roll with it next season.”
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