Research & Development at Driveline Baseball

Driveline Baseball’s history and success is rooted in Research and Development (R&D), and has been since it was founded in 2007 by Kyle Boddy.

First, we evaluate our training through a review of peer-reviewed sports-science articles. Is there a tested or theoretical foundation for what we wish to implement with athletes?

Second, we do our best to replicate those studies in-house with our athletes to determine if those findings will work for our population of athletes.

Not until a drill or training methodology has met both parts of the two-part test do we include it with our programming. From there, our software team develops the tools and reports to help our trainers leverage the data and analytics to train our athletes.

Brief reviews of the research papers that drive our creative process are available at our Pitching Research webpage.

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HISTORY

From our humble beginnings in a small batting cage in North Seattle, Driveline Baseball began testing other training concepts – weighted baseballs were one of the first modalities tested, back in mid-2008. We interviewed multiple professionals in the field to get their opinions, ranging from biomechanical experts to pediatric orthopedic surgeons, and tested range of motion pre/post throwing protocols as well as our subject group’s velocity gains. Our case study reflected what’s currently written about in baseball – that weighted implement programming increases velocity, and that there is no causal or even corollary link between their use and injuries.

From then on, we decided that we would lead the industry in quantitative analysis of training modalities in baseball, and became the first data-driven baseball training facility in the world.

Since then we’ve continued to enhance our training modalities by building on past research, in addition to performing our own internal investigations. We acquired a gold-standard motion capture lab and force plates that we use to assess and evaluate our athletes, as well as contributing to further research of hitting and pitching biomechanics. We have also used EMG and IMU sensors, EEG/ EKG headsets, and gaze tracking glasses to help our athletes, as well as continued to contribute to the validation of technologies like Rapsodo and the MotusTHROW sensor.

Later this year, Driveline will be moving to a new facility where we’ll have a dedicated research and development wing. The 5,000+ sq. ft. area will include markerless and marker-based motion capture systems, batter’s boxes and a pitching mound instrumented with tri-axial force plates, research-grade EMG sensors, and the gamet of pitch and ball tracking technologies.

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TEAM

The Driveline Baseball R&D team is supported by other employees and internal contractors. Additionally, we have an informal advisory board of orthopedic surgeons, expert biomechanists, kinesiologists, quantitative analysts, and exercise scientists we consult with on a regular basis to guide the mission of the department.

Most of the website talks about the benefits of training at Driveline Baseball. Here’s where we get to talk about the features, the real nerd stuff. Inside of our training center and research lab (separate buildings in our complex), we use the following tools to maximize athletic performance, develop better injury prevention programs, and perform industry-leading research and experimentation:

RESISTANCE TRAINING

• Keiser Infinity Series Functional Trainer to measure rotational power and prescribe minutely graduated consistent resistance exercises in injury rehabilitation cases
• Tendo Power Analyzer with Bluetooth sending units (2) to measure bar speed and power output in resistance training movements

PROTOTYPING

• MakerGear M2 and PolyPrinter 229 3d printers for rapid prototyping of new devices and modifications for in-gym equipment

Take a look at the beauty of two synchronized and genlocked Edgertronic cameras – filming pitching mechanics in slow motion:

Here are some example reports and visualizations that we generate to improve athlete training results and to conduct research to contribute back to the scientific community:

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PUBLISHING RESEARCH

We are committed to publishing open source research back to the baseball community where it belongs. Our Primary Research category contains all in-house collected data and reports that we are making publicly available at no charge. In almost all cases – except when it would violate personal privacy – we release full datasets for independent validation and analysis. Researchers like Dr. Mike Sonne have used these datasets, and we advocate that any independent researcher, coach, parent, or player do the same!

Furthermore, in 2017, we took steps to begin submitting our research to peer-reviewed journals. After a lengthy education and selection process, we have decided to submit articles primarily to PeerJ. Professor Dee Carter, one of PeerJ’s editors and a Fellow at the American Academy of Microbiology, said it best:

[PeerJ is] driven by people with a real passion for communicating science and for making a difference to how we access and read about scientific progress, which aligns with my own passions for research and written communication. With PeerJ I feel like I’m part of a team aimed at pushing forward open access research.

PeerJ is extremely strict when it comes to submission guidelines and they believe strongly in the ethos of Open Access. They require IRB approval for all human studies and also require that all data be published with your article submission, where it will then be made public for everyone to view. There is also the option to make the peer review process open to readers, which reveals how the system works after submission.

It is our view that science is not truly science unless it can be replicated, and PeerJ’s mission statement agrees with that. Replication requires open access – all article submissions are free to download under a Creative Commons license – and detailed methods and datasets to analyze and start as a jumping off point for meta-analyses and new research projects.

Furthermore, PeerJ’s time to first review and their revision process is faster than the average journal by a wide margin, which incentivizes us to continue to engage the peer-review process.

We plan on splitting our blog post-style research and submissions to PeerJ – we will publish Case Studies to our blog, as we’ve done in the past, and we will publish more rigorously designed research to PeerJ. We may also submit Case Studies to PeerJ’s Preprint server as well.

PUBLISHED ARTICLES IN PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS