In a game transformed by the Sabermetric Revolution, where the most important components have been optimized and made more efficient, pitch sequencing has largely remained an art form resistant to the most technical analyses. Although many analysts have attempted to crack the pitch sequencing code,...
Can we accurately evaluate an organization’s ability to acquire and develop players relative to their competitors? In part one of our mini-series looking at the overall state of minor league player acquisition and development, we attempted to answer that question by building a database of over 8,000...
As we’ve continued along with The Business Case For Player Development Series, we’ve attempted to evaluate and analyze specific subcomponents of player development in today’s rapidly changing landscape. These micro-level analyses have been useful in identifying the cost of inefficiencies that still...
In our last piece, we took a surface level look at the first publicly available pairing of Blast and HitTrax data. In this piece, we take a look at commonly held, specific beliefs that have been touched upon by our hitting trainers and see whether the data backs it up. We also take a more nuanced vi...
In part one of The Business Case For Player Development series, we calculated prospect valuations for top tier minor leaguers and validated those estimates by looking at several trades throughout MLB. Building on that work, we use those valuations in this post to model the net-present value of impro...
It’s fairly common to watch a game these days, see a pitcher throw 99 mph, and hear the reaction of fans be a mix of amazement and fear: amazement that certain pitchers can throw that hard, and fear that it’s unsafe and an injury is guaranteed. Given the many misconceptions and unknowns related to v...
In our previous biomechanics post, we looked at the data we had collected over the past six months. We looked at the averages of key metrics and what metrics correlate to velocity and torques on the arm. But we didn’t really look at how we interpret a biomechanics report for our athletes. When desig...
This off-season and spring training have seen a major upheaval in the number and type of coach that is being hired into the professional ranks, while the use of technology throughout all levels of professional baseball has increased drastically. This new level of investment demonstrates clearly that...
As access to ball-flight data becomes more readily available and intricate theories of pitch/swing design continue to increase in popularity within the player-development community, we can easily overlook one of the most arguably fundamental concepts of the game: how batters see the ball as it heads...
This past summer at Driveline, we had more than 200 athletes pass through our gym, and each of them went through a full biomechanics assessment. That’s a lot of data, a lot of arm paths, a lot of lower-half mechanics, a lot of kinematic sequences, and a lot of arm stress. From the information gather...
