Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ainsworth: Competitors admitted targeting Marucci to slow its market share growth
“There's no question. We've had conversations with some of those other companies across, over the years, and they said, we could take some hits from some smaller companies, but what you guys did, y'all were taking so much market share, you know, we kind of had …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ainsworth: Legacy bat competitors shipped dozens where few were game-ready
“We saw that the other competitors in the space were sending out, you know, 12 bats to a player when they'd order a dozen players, and only three or four of them would be good enough to use in a game.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ainsworth: Competitors' bats also failed lab tests, but only Marucci was decertified
“We then took bats from the field, sent them to the lab, and they were all over the limit, but nobody else was decertified but us,”
Assertion Supported
Ainsworth: Marucci and Victus both surpassed Louisville Slugger in MLB usage
“As we surpassed Louisville Slugger, I think in 2013, they surpassed Louisville Slugger in 2018 is the number two bad and used by major league players, I should say.”
Insight
Ainsworth: Training with wooden bats makes players better hitters with aluminum bats
“If you can learn how to hit with a wooden bat and find the sweet spot on that, when you pick up your aluminum or your composite bat, you're going to be a better hitter.”
Assertion Partly supported
Ainsworth: A hammer drives nails into ash bats, but bends on maple
“Maple's just a harder wood, and if you really
You know, show people a player comes in, you could take a nail with a hammer and drive it right into an ash bat. You take that same nail and try to put it in a maple bat. It's going to bend the nail and you show a…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ainsworth: Marucci has never paid a player to swing its bats
“You know, we've never paid a player to swing a bat. And a lot of that was because we just couldn't afford to pay players.”
Assertion Supported
Marucci and Victus will both be official MLB bats in 2025
“We'll have Marucci and Victus will both be official bats next year. So that's a, it's a huge opportunity for us.”
Insight
Ainsworth: Working harder in baseball led to more injuries
“The harder I worked in baseball, the more injuries I had. You can only throw so much. You can only run and lift so much”
Disclosure
Ainsworth: Marucci compressed every bat with a cow femur
“We used to actually use a cow femur and compress the grains of the bat to make it a harder bat. So if you didn't, Compress it, you could have seam marks in your bat, and to us, that meant softer. So we were compressing every bat with a cow femur.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ainsworth: Marucci weighs baseball bats down to a tenth of an ounce
“We weighed our bats down to the 10th of an ounce, which we still do to this day, and we wanted to be perfect.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ainsworth: Only ~7% of Marucci's wood meets pro player quality standards
“I think we started looking at our numbers. It's less than 10% of our wood. More like seven percent probably goes to a pro player.”
Assertion Supported
Ainsworth: Early lead in maple bats drove Marucci's rapid market share growth
“And then the emerald ash beetle, the ash borer beetle came in and kind of wiped out most of the ash in the United States. So then it really forced everybody to Into Maple, and we had a really big head start on the Maple side, so that allowed us to gain market …”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ainsworth: Marucci founders worked 14-hour days giving 220 monthly lessons to survive
“Joe and I would show up at 6:30 in the morning, work for Marucci from six 30 to two 30. We would kind of change into our PE uniforms, we called it, and then we would go do lessons till nine p.m., Monday through Friday, and then lessons on Sunday, 12 to six. An…”
Disclosure
Ainsworth: Co-founders ignored legal advice and acquired their timber mill supplier
“When we got word from that employee that our competitor was there trying to buy it, Joe and I actually got on a plane against our lawyer's advice, brought a document with us, and bought the company.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ainsworth: Marucci founders acquired their wood mill for under $500,000
“At that point in time, I think we were somewhere Just under half a million dollars for the whole mill.”
Assertion Partly supported
Ainsworth: Pujols, Ortiz, and other MLB stars invested in Marucci
“So, I mean Albert Pujols was an early one, of course. You know, Ryan Vogelsang, the next giant at that time. You know, Sean Casey, Harold Reynolds, you know, we've had so David Ortiz, Jose Bautista. I mean, it was kind of a who's who of players. Will Clark, my…”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Ainsworth: 2012 bat decertification caused a multi-million dollar loss for Marucci
“We did. We actually took them to a scrapyard and recycled them. There was nothing else we could do with them, and it was a multi-million dollar hit for a company that didn't have money.”
Assertion Not publicly verifiable
Ainsworth: Marucci reached roughly $25M in revenue in 2015
“I'd say we were probably more like twenty five million in revenue that year.”
Assertion Supported
Marucci Sports nearly tripled its business in three years under Compass Diversified
“You know, that acquisition was awesome for us, and we quickly almost tripled our business within just three years with their ownership.”
Assertion Supported
Ainsworth received a $1.3 million signing bonus from the Giants at 20
“It was a good one, a 1.3 million dollar start at 20 years old.”
Assertion Supported
Ainsworth: Pitched with a broken shoulder blade in 2003
“Then they finally figured out after my 11 start that I had a broken shoulder blade, and it was tough, and but I was still pitching well, so they were throwing me out there, and I didn't want to come off the mound.”
