“” Motus Global Acquisition: Vision and Strategic Roadmap - Driveline Baseball

Motus Global Acquisition: Vision and Strategic Roadmap

| Pulse, Research
Reading Time: 5 minutes

We Acquired Motus Global!

As announced Monday, Driveline Baseball has acquired the sport sensor assets of Motus Global–specifically all sensor code and inventory, all trademarks and patents, all databases, and all outstanding contracts.

This begins a new era in Driveline’s history. One that will be marked by:

  • Improving our year-round training solutions for athletes
  • Lowering the cost of integrated player development software
  • Increasing the accuracy and accessibility of our technologies

So What’s the Plan?

We bought Motus Global’s sensor business because we believed one truth: 

This was a good but not perfect workload monitor for pitchers. 

Nothing like it exists on the market. 

What the team at Motus Global did when they built this technology is remarkable–it is affordable, it is directly applicable to an athlete’s routine, and it’s accurate enough.

As its next owner, we believe we can add value to the baseball community by validating Motus Global sensor data against our biomechanics lab, finding new ways to deliver value, and building features that improve baseball performance. 

Validating the Data

If you’re buying a Motus Global sensor from Driveline, you’re inviting us to be a meaningful part of your practice and gameday routines.

We owe it to you to be as accurate as possible. We previously validated the sensor against our biomechanics lab, concluding: 

“Excepting elbow extension velocity, all metrics from the MotusBASEBALL unit showed significant correlations to their corresponding metrics from motion capture and while some magnitudes differ substantially and therefore fall short in validity, the link between the metrics is strong enough to indicate reliable casual use. Further research should be done to further investigate the validity and reliability of the arm speed metric.”

Driveline is going to deepen that validation work, investigating ways to make the sensor more accurate against our lab results.

Specifically, we’ll be undertaking these projects within the first 6 months:

  • Updating our validation against our in-gym lab for bullpens
  • Validating the sensor against our in-gym lab for weighted baseball and Plyo Ball ® throws

Both of these projects not only improve the global accuracy of throwing stress and related metrics but will also improve the accuracy of the A:C Ratio calculation.

Delivering New Value 

If we believe that acute/chronic workload ratios can help coaches and athletes build throwing volume successfully while reducing the risk of injury, then we owe it to the baseball community to make that technology as accessible as possible. 

To that end, we will have a new subscription model with a lower-priced option and some new features coming this fall

  • Generate workload data from Rapsodo or Trackman reports
  • Populate workouts from Driveline’s TRAQ into your Motus Global app
  • Write your own programs inside MotusDASH
  • Historical tracking of bullpens
  • ….a few other things we can’t talk about yet

But that’s not the only feature set we are looking to improve.

One of the contributing factors to Driveline Baseball not being able to fully adopt the Motus technology stack internally was….lack of washing machines on site. We just didn’t feel like there was a work/reward trade-off to hand-washing 150+ sleeves every day (or creating a system internally that relied on athlete’s owning and washing their own).

Sleeves as a form factor are fine. But we’d like to make sure we’ve exhausted all of our options to find the best way to ensure the sensor is firmly in the right place for an entire day of throwing.

We have some ideas–we’ll be testing them.

Improving Baseball Performance and Going Sensor-Lite

With our ability to correlate sensor data directly to our lab in Kent, WA (and do so with a growing sample size of athletes), eventually Motus Global sensors can become an affordable, portable Driveline lab-in-a-box. 

Working with other technology partners and teams, we can ultimately create analysis backed by accurate technology and sound science at an affordable price. 

Combined with our efforts to find new ways to wear the sensor and new experiences that do not require use of the sensor every day, we believe Driveline + Motus Global can help pitchers at all levels get more out of their careers. 

The Driveline/Motus Experience in 2021

A pitcher logs into their phone and sees that it’s Assessment Week.

For the next 3 days, they complete a variety of structured throwing plans with a prescribed number of throws, weights of ball, distances and effort levels. Based on that data, they get a score for where they stand relative to their peers.

Based on your drill performance, Driveline can recommend suggested drills for your athlete to improve.

For the next 28 days, they complete their work in Driveline TRAQ or the Motus DASH. They don’t wear the sensor and just mark their work for that day complete. Their A:C Ratio adjusts based on what we know from their Assessment.

The coach and the pitcher are alerted if work isn’t completed–or if A:C Ratios are deviating significantly.

If you need a coach, we have some available to evaluate your throwing program, data and video. If you don’t, keep doing your thing.

We have some work to get there…but we’re excited to start digging in.

Comment section

Add a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.

X
0
    0
    Your Cart
    Your cart is emptyReturn to Shop
      Calculate Shipping