OUR STORY
It All Started with a Love for Baseball and A Prayer
Founder and Owner, Leland Wetzel, grew up playing and loving the sport of baseball. The dream at a very young age was to play college ball, and possibly pro ball. After suffering shoulder injuries through his junior high years and eventually going through 2 shoulder surgeries, one during his sophomore year of high school, and the other during his freshman year of college, any baseball after high school was out of the question.
Leland also grew up with a love for wood working, following in his grandpa and dad's footsteps, so he decided to put the love of baseball and woodworking together. In July of 2012, Leland thought of the idea to make a wood bat for his nephew who would be turning one year old in August of that year. After talking to his grandpa, they went and met up with a wood-turner who let Leland borrow his lathe to make the bat.
When Leland pulled up to the man's house to make that first bat he sat in his car and prayed. The prayer was simple, but Leland had no idea what the Lord had planned for the future.
Leland prayed, "Lord, if you want this to be a hobby for me or maybe something even more than a hobby, give me a passion for it". And He did just that.
After making that first bat, he had to make more. The next few months involved extensive hours of learning about wood, best practices of wood-turning and testing bats. And Xylo Bats, LLC was created.
The first batch of bat were created in his parent's garage, but he then moved into a small shed next to his house in Dean, TX for better convenience. This shed produced over 100 wood bats for the next couple of years and it created, what Leland believes, the most important part of Xylo Bats - The hardening process.
Fast forward to October of 2016. Some great friends of Leland and his wife, Rachel, are from Minnesota, but
stationed at Sheppard Air Force Base in Wichita Falls, TX. After finding out about Xylo Bats, they mentioned that they had a connection with Minnesota Twins first baseman, Joe Mauer and asked if Leland could make a bat for them to take up to Joe. Of course, he jumped on the opportunity (especially because Leland grew up as a big fan of Joe's) made him a bat, as well as wrote him a letter explaining the company and asking Joe to give it a try if he was able to.
Months went by before one day Leland received a text from his friend saying Joe loved the bat and is interested in talking about more for the season. Leland quickly made three bats to Joe's specs and got the opportunity to take the bats down to the Texas Rangers ballpark and hand deliver them to Joe in April of 2017. After hearing feedback from Joe and other players, we knew we had something special and needed to pursue this opportunity of growing Xylo. With quality being at the core of everything we did, we quickly began producing more bats and ended 2017 with producing 275 baseball bats.
Growth did not slow down from there, in 2018 we became an approved wood bat company for professional play and produced 683 baseball bats within that year. In 2019 we doubled our production and produced 1,300 bats that shipped to all 50 states, as well as Canada, Germany and Australia.
Xylo also was given the incredible opportunity in 2020 to become
the official wood bat of the Miracle League. This gives us the opportunity to play a part in allowing people with special needs
across the nation to play the great game of baseball. We couldn't
be more excited to be a part of this awesome organization!
Click here to learn more about The Miracle League.
We thank the Lord every day for allowing us to run a business that
creates products for the great game of baseball and we can't wait
to see what the future is going to hold for us.
MEDIA
OUR TEAM
Leland Wetzel
Founder & CEO
Leland has a passion for sharing the Xylo story. He also loves creating a vision that can allow Xylo Bats to continue growing and creating the best bats on the market.
Ryan Reed
Production Lead
Ryan oversees the entire process of the production of bats. He has years of wood working experience and has a passion for quality work.
Ross Harrison
Co-owner
As co-owner in Xylo, Ross plays an important role in thinking through business decisions to help Xylo continue to grow.
Mason Rousseaux
Production Specialist
Mason specializes in producing the highest quality bats on the market. He is hard working and pays close attention to detail throughout the entire process.