The Influencer Bros Selling More Baseball Bats Than the Pros

The sun is just setting over the Bend Elks’ baseball stadium, so Will Taylor is standing at home plate getting ready for work. For him this means setting up a camera, lights and a pitching machine to do a job that’s made him famous to millions of young players—and didn’t exist until he and his brother dreamed it up a few years ago: smashing baseballs on YouTube.

Taylor is the charismatic co-founder and star of the Baseball Bat Bros, who’ve become a singular force in the billion-dollar market for baseball equipment. Part MrBeast, part Consumer Reports, the channel pumps out a steady stream of slickly edited, high-energy videos in which Taylor reviews the latest bats or attempts zany stunts with them. Two years ago he traveled with a Guinness World Records adjudicator to the highest-elevation baseball field in the US, in Victor, Colorado—where balls sail forever in the thin mountain air—in an attempt to outdo Babe Ruth, who hit a legendary 575-foot home run in 1921. (Taylor came up just short but tried again last year and hit one 580 feet, though without the Guinness folks in tow.) His formula has hooked legions of players, from Little Leaguers to the college ranks, who treat Taylor’s opinions like Holy Scripture and buy the bats he thinks are best.