As I’m sure you have seen in sporting news, on the internet, and/or advertised at various facilities, the influx of measurement tools since the StatCast era started in 2015 has been tremendous, and fast. More and more facilities who simply give lessons and rent tunnels are joining the charge.
In 2013 we were standing on ladders using a stalker radar gun to try to get an accurate and functional reading of exit velocity at the most accurate angles. We were pointing to the top of the cage, targeting hard hit balls in the air before it was “cool” and even now, despite the enormous amount of data clearly supporting that strategy there is still some push back.
I have to commend HitTrax on their amazing product, user experience, and customer service, if you’re starting a baseball business this is the place to start. While it was labeled as “too expensive” for a long time, they have since helped facilities monetize their machine with a free business model to not only provide objective data, but also a “video game” like experience for youth players, which in many cases is actually much more profitable than the way we use it.
Having 3 HitTrax machines at one point we’ve done a lot of cool things with it, experimented with all of it’s capabilities, offered suggestions to pre-built reports, and even managed to access more information than HitTrax can offer by diving deeper into the raw CSV files. Pretty cool stuff to give a lot of insight in terms of REAL player development strategies.
Now Dick’s Sporting Goods has jumped on the train and congratulations to them and implementing this experience across so many stores! Here are a few quotes from Twitter:
“Dick’s putting HitTrax in their stores just took shopping trips with the girlfriend to a whole new level”
“Makes the answer to, ‘Want to go to the mall?’ go from a nope to a yup! Proud of you, @DICKS”
Hitting foam balls off a tee I’m sure is certainly entertaining to the average population and definitely makes a bat buying experience a little better than randomly picking one off the internet. Unfortunately, the “bat fitting” idea using HitTrax the way they have it set up at Dick’s is in fact, problematic.
Not for the fact of HitTrax, but because they are limited only based on the bats and information put into HitTrax. The sample size necessary to test a plethora of bats, bat lengths, bat weight, etc. would tie up a single player in the HitTrax area of Dick’s for hours, if not a few days in order to do this right.
We know this because we have been early adopters of the most advanced bat fitting system currently on the market created and designed by Aaron Chamberlain of Great Lakes Bat Company. (You’ve probably heard us mention them on our podcast)
This system provides a data base of options based on your custom fitting using your individual swing characteristics tested with a Blast Motion Sensor.
The BBCOR bats are interesting because even in that data base players are still limited to a specific list of options where as wood bats for professionals can be more custom. In a perfect world the two fitting ideas would go together. Be fitted for swing weight, and potential length, and test out 2 – 3 BBCOR options that fell into those specs. I might argue hitting foam balls to test Exit Velocity isn’t the most efficient way to test, in the sense of false barrel to ball skills with ‘said bat,’ but that’s probably a topic for another day.
More and more companies will be using HitTrax or Rapsodo in order to track exit velocities and collect data in order to be able to promote their service as advanced or superior. Unfortunately, it is likely too late to make those claims, it is now 2019, to quote Kyle Boddy from Driveline Research,
“… you’re not ahead, you’re just doing your job.”
I’m grateful for all players, that more and more coaches are providing these types of resources to help enhance their player development.
Thank you HitTrax for making a great product, one that protects me from falling off a ladder, plus Houston is cool to hit bombs at….
Lastly, another very cool thing is, once a product like this comes out, it provides more and more people an opportunity to build off of it. In 6 years, I wonder what our next “standing on a ladder” idea will be, that everybody else tries to catch up to…..
The future is bright my friends