The Bat and the Can

If you’ve seen any sports news recently, you probably heard about the new “torpedo bats” the Yankees are using and how well they seem to be working.

It’s a simple redesign. By redistributing weight away from the end, the bat delivers more mass at the point of contact, resulting in farther hits.

The idea came from physicist Aaron Leanhardt, who was working as the Yankees’ hitting coordinator. As he put it: “I think the eureka moment… was when players pointed to where they were trying to hit the ball, and they noticed themselves that that was not the fattest part of the bat.”

What struck me wasn’t just the bat redesign. It was that I had stopped thinking of bats as something that still had room for innovation. The last example that came to mind? The corking scandals from the 1990s and early 2000s. But unlike corked bats, torpedo bats are legal.

Now for the can.

The other half of the title refers to a well-known letter sent by Carnation to a math professor who had proposed a 1:1 height-to-diameter redesign for their cans. His suggestion was to minimize surface area and therefore material use, but ignored other constraints.

“We appreciate the interest you expressed in examining the height-to-diameter relationship of containers used in our food products. A 1:1 ratio of height versus diameter is the most efficient use of material, if only the surface area of material is considered. However…” Then the letter goes on to explain that issues such thermal processing, strength requirements, line changeover time, scrap loss, and more. The solution is not related only to surface area.

The difference between the bats and the can?

In the case of the bats, the innovator started off by knowing the user (the hitters) and then worked with them to create a solution. In the case of the proposed can redesign, the potential innovator lacked that and missed the bigger picture.