This caught the attention of physicists and baseball fans alike.

The Yankees are using new bats and I promise this sportsball story relates to how you work with developers.

It all started on March 29: the New York Yankees bring out a bat with a slightly new shape. And then they hit four home runs.

And that was only the first inning. They’d more than double that and beat the Brewer’s 20-9 by the end of the game.

See if you can spot the difference:

Apparently the Yankees got some MIT physicists (and Red Sox traitors) to rethink the bat shape. They noticed that players who hit on the thinner part of the bat had worse outcomes.

No surprise, the thick part of the bat is called “the sweet spot” for a reason.

But then they designed a bat, within the official baseball definition, with a larger sweet spot. That’s the torpedo bat, so-called for its wider shape.

Some called it cheating. Others called it innovation. The results were hard to ignore in that first game.

Now consider the impact you’ve seen with your technical content:

Home runs? Solid contact? Or too many misses?

The thing I’ve noticed looking at the inside of many technical content programs… they are usually more reactive than proactive.

They’re missing the ​simple technical content pattern​ that can expand the sweet spot and make it more likely for your content to hit.

Start with where developers are before they discover your product.

From that perspective, it’s much, much harder to strike out