Kurt Ainsworth on the 'torpedo bat' controversy

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That's promo code BRIAN. it guaranteed save up to 40% your first year at lifelock.com slash podcast terms apply Anthony Volpe who hit 243 here's a pop flying to right back at the track this ball will carry and go Goldschmidt swings at the first pitch and lost it to left center field and deep Mitchell back track wall see ya Bellinger lost one deep to right center there it goes into the bleachers see ya high fly ball left field trio back track wall see ya the bat worked a three-run home run Anthony Volpe he went to right field the other day left field today and Volpe is not known for being a home run hitter and the Yankees won their first three games but the amount of home runs they hit and the bat they used was making headlines around the league around the country even for those who aren't baseball fans it's called the torpedo bat and the Yankees analytics department wanted to make one and the mariuchi sports was able to answer that call and come up with it and it's been in circulation for a couple of years but now getting a lot of fame Kurt Ainsworth is the co-founder of mariuchi sports which is making the torpedo bats and joins us now hey Kurt welcome hey thanks for having me how has your life changed since the Yankees got off to that rip-roaring start it's been great it's been torpedo mania that's for sure to kick off our first years the official bats of mld it's been it's been fun to see all the attention around baseball and around bats it's been a blast right so uh tell me what is the torpedo bat yeah so it's uh it was really designed by an ex-mit uh physicist with the Yankees at the time and he was just studying data on how we can make that better for major league players um he was looking at where balls were impacting bats and came up with this creative design to take mass out of the end of the bat and move it towards the where the players were hitting more often into the you know the sweet spot and so that started at the end of 23 we had two players use it last year with John Carlos Stanton and Francisco Lindor and it didn't really take off other players saw it and then this year of course uh the Yankees get off to that crazy start and everybody's talking about the torpedo bat so it's been a lot of fun but judge is not using it right he's not he is not uh Stanton was the first or one of the first he was yeah Stanton was the first one uh last year to use it then he had that great uh postseason with the seven home runs in the postseason last year and then Lindor last year also used it and did really well but no other players were really really to give it a try yet they just it looks different and then now with all the data in the game today you can show the player that hey this will help you perform better this is where you're hitting the ball more often let's move mass there and players are buying in much easier nowadays so it's interesting so uh Kurt when you started putting it into play what year did it actually come into play last year yeah 24 and what kind of response outside stands uh response have you did you started getting a sense from the players that there's something special here you know our our guys here started believing in it it just looks funny Brian I'm gonna be honest with you when you look at it looks like a bowling pin and it's just something that's out of it just wasn't normal but now I think with this height and people seeing the results I think now if you look at it you're like okay I like it now it doesn't bother me I'm not supposed to hit on the end of the bat anyway right I want you to do what Aaron Boone uh said cut 42 I say to you guys all the time we're trying to win on the margins and trying to get and that shows up in so many different ways whether you see you know bat models um you know we saw the momentum steals that Volpe does you see shifts he's like when I say those kind of things like we have a big organization that are invested in a lot of different things where we're trying to be better in every possible way so that that's what he said he got in there so you make sure it was legal and it's in part of the Yankee organization what have the orders Kurt been like since the Yankees got off the 15 home run start it's been great and you know there's other teams doing it as well I know the Yankees get all the publicity which is awesome for baseball because that's a you know it's a huge market but it is great Aaron Boone says it correctly other teams have these data scientists now and if you aren't investing in data scientists if you aren't looking at where you should play the shifts in the field and if you aren't doing those things you are getting left behind not just the salaries uh separating the teams but when your teams like the Yankees Orioles Dodgers if they invest in these data scientists they're going to have an advantage and like you said you went on the margin yeah I guess so and can can um you know other leagues use this can high schools use this yeah yeah absolutely I mean high school you're going to still benefit more from a you know aluminum or composite bat at this point in time but you know we do have a a torpedo bat out there and kids are flocking to it it is going to if you can hit the ball in the sweet spot you're gonna you should perform better with the torpedo bat because I mean you don't need that weight at the end of the bat so kurt you're a player I mean can pitchers adjust to this not I mean can you can a pitcher adjust like let's not throw it near the thickness in the bat that's not possible is it yeah look I don't I don't think it's that drastic I'll be honest with you I think it's it's a small adjustment at that level but you know pitching has gotten so good these guys are throwing so hard they're making up new pitches and the defenses are getting better so as you can tell offense has gone down you know there's less hits batting average has gone down so if there's a way that we can you know have more contact put more balls in play and keep this excitement going I mean baseball is a lot more fun now when it's sped up and if we can have some more offense too inside of this and less strikeouts I think it just gets better so tell me your story you're an athlete a baseball player yourself tell me how far you went yeah I was a former pitcher which doesn't really make sense that I co-founded the bat company but I kept getting injured I played at LSU I went on to play in the major leagues I was a pitcher with the San Francisco Giants Baltimore Orioles and then finished up with the Dodgers but I ended up getting hurt and started the bat company with two other guys while I was playing for the Orioles so this is our 21st year in business and it's been it's been one heck of a ride I've been this is my 11th year as the actual CEO of the company now and you know we've sold a couple times we're publicly traded now but I'm having more fun than ever before wow so you were you actually won a gold medal in the Olympics too who was your manager Tommy Lasorda legendary Tommy Lasorda that was a that was a heck of a run we had a great young team and went over there and beat Cuba in 2001 you know the Olympic gold medal was just a great time yeah he called it one of his greatest victories greatest thrills it was one world series that's saying a lot this episode is brought to you by select quote life insurance can have a huge impact on our family's future with select quote getting covered with the right policy for you is simple and affordable select quotes licensed insurance agents will tailor your experience to find a life insurance policy for your needs in as little as 15 minutes and select quote partners with carriers that provide policies for many conditions select quote they shop you save go to select quote dot com slash spotify pod today to get started so kurt when you realized you had to start thinking about another career what led you to getting into staying in baseball and getting into the back company yeah I think I was just lucky right the stars have aligned for me in my career many many times and this is just one instance I came back to to LSU to do my rehab on my shoulder and our head trainer was Jack Marucci and I was in the club in the training room with another player former big leader named Joe Lawrence and he was rehabbing a knee while he was playing football for Nick Saban he came back as a 27 year old freshman to play football for Nick Saban Jack was the head trainer rehabbing his knee my shoulder and to fast forward as we got along in our rehab we're like man my shoulder hurts your knee hurts what are we going to do now that our careers are over in sports what about a bat company and then we started talking about it you know uh saying man Marucci sounds a lot better than Ainsworth or Lawrence so it sounds like that designer Lamborghini Ferrari let's go with Marucci and that's really how it started back in 2004 in the training room at LSU and then where'd you go from there how do you how do you go get an idea to becoming a business yeah I mean it was a baptism by fire in certain ways being in the clubhouse helped we knew that there was a an opportunity that uh you know the old way of doing things needed some tweaking just like the bats now really at the point in time you that the other companies were sending 12 bats and only three or four would get enough for a game and we said every single bat we send out was going to be perfect you know I was a former pitcher and they would give I would order wood and get bad wood and I'm like man they're walking guys to get to me I need the best wood so we said when we started our company we're going to get every player's going to get top quality gamer bats the best wood and you know we started that way and it really took off and guys like you know David Wright and Carlos Beltran and Albert Pujols really adapted you know to our brand and to our wood and that is what led us to you know expanding the company outside of Wood Bats in 2009 is when we really became a sporting goods brand you were making the bats in your backyard or Marucci's backyard yes it started Jack was doing it as a hobby in his backyard and then when we started the company I built a shed in my backyard in a neighborhood in Baton Rouge it was kind of wild our neighbors thought we were crazy uh Jack would come home after Nick Saban would yell at him at practice and he would cut bats at night and Joe and I would sand paint finish and sell the bats during the day and we did that for about a year and then it took off and then we moved over to you know the side of town where we're at now so in other words you have to convince you can get a player to use your bat but you're not the major league baseball bat how did you get major league baseball to become the bat of major league baseball yes it's been a long journey here you know Louisville Slugger is an iconic brand everybody knows Louisville Slugger have all the respect in the world for them they've been doing it for a long time uh you know over 130 plus years now and so they've been the only official bat of MLB and we've been talking about this for a while and now that you know 55% of the league are using Marucci Invictus our two brands so it just made sense that we would solidify that that deal to where we would become the official bats and then now to where we can work with MLB and put the logos on bats and really promote our players because we have such high profile players using our products we want to be able to promote them and to be able to do that you had to be the official bats understood the wood you used uh Amish you bought an Amish run wood mill in Pennsylvania yeah you know Brian's what we normally do when you start a back home you just go up to Pennsylvania and you buy wood mill no we didn't know what we were doing at the time we just knew we were getting great wood from there and we wanted to protect our supply and I think it's one of the best decisions we ever made we went and bought our wood mill back in like 2007 and then we've expanded since then bought another wood mill and a timber company up in uh Pennsylvania we get all of our wood most of our wood is maple and it's all pulled from the Appalachian region up there so um it's it's awesome all of our wood is manufactured in either Baton Rouge Louisiana or King of Prussia Pennsylvania wow so where what is the demand from your from your company now how many bats you putting out a day I mean are this all levels yeah you know the torpedo that gave us a little bump this week I will say but uh you know the business has grown quite a bit I mean we're you're talking about doing you know thousands of bats a day uh throughout the course of a year for us but this this has been a lot of fun with the torpedoes and it's something new and it's not just a fad I think it's something that's going to stay because it makes sense and it's finally somebody looking at the game with basically outside eyes saying I'm not just going to use a bat just because it's been done that way for a long time they're bringing real data in there and tweaking the bat and I think it you know kids will have better performance out of this and I always tell people if you've never seen a kid run around the bases after hitting a home run and he's not laughing or smiling I mean it's the greatest feeling in the world so we want to have kids have more success and that's what that's what it's all about in baseball we want to keep promoting this great game I know and where do you stand I know where you stand business wise but when it comes to you play college you play you could lose use aluminum bats it's kind of dangerous don't you think they've deadened them down if you will to where they perform just like wood now believe or not so I think that a lot of the bats are as long as they're staying within standard which we see now with all the data and stadiums Brian I mean it's easy to to find the cheating bats if you will or if somebody's breaking the rules every stadium has exit velocities and swing speeds I mean you can find out the bats that are over the limit and get them out of the game pretty pretty quickly now to where they are safer so I feel like we couldn't make enough wood for everybody that wants to play to swing wood so I think there's there is a place for the aluminum and composite bats but as long as they're staying within the limits right I want you to hear what Stephen A Smith said he went to your defense cup 44 it ain't illegal everybody else free to do it exactly what we're complaining about the Yankees doing it for I mean damn it even though even the pitcher Cortez that got the home run smacked on him all right four to five homers gave it up was my guys using this he didn't complain about it look if it's illegal that's a different matter if it's legal and everyone's free to do it then it ain't a controversy period right so I mean obviously you feel the same way yeah look that's well said right by Stephen A right there everybody can use it other teams are doing it I do think the teams that have the data analysts are going to have more of an advantage because not everybody misses or hits in the same spot so we're actually making the bat exactly to the specs of where they're making the most contact so each bat is custom made for the hitter all right thanks so much hey listen Kirk congratulations on all this enjoy your time in the spotlight hope you get a ton of orders Kurt Ainsworth co-founder and ceo of mariuchi sports uh he's the founder of or the one who was asked to design what we now know as the torpedo bat thanks kurt thanks for having me fox news audio presents the fox nation investigates podcast evil next door exploring the life and crimes of five serial predators from across the united states listen and follow now at fox true crime.com or wherever you get your favorite podcasts listen to this show ad free on fox news 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