While we wait for the player logjam to clear, I’m going to busy myself with other pursuits. Recently has been the time to get more serious about understanding all this technology the Cardinals have fallen
behind in adapting. What is it? How does it help?
Approach
When I started this journey, what I found is that teams tend to treat what they have (and what they do not have) as trade secret and they don’t divulge. I had to resort to a highly technical research methodology. I learned by listening to player and front office interviews. Good sources turn out to be players who are rehabbing from injury. Another good source is to find a podcast with one of their performance techs at a bio-mechanics geek conference, where they talk about their stuff to other people who geek out on this stuff. I even looked at some of the team’s job postings on Indeed.com to see what they profiled in their “help wanted” ads for Performance Management techs. Each often contained off-hand references to one tech or another. Then I’d try and track down references to see what it entailed. Methodologically impressive, huh? From those casual and unintended references, I followed the breadcrumbs. Some to dead ends, some to some interesting and enlightening things. I will try to stick with the interesting and enlightening.
Technology
This is a highly summarized version of tech and gadgets I stumbled into. It is quite the list. Dizzying, almost. It is long enough that I really can’t get too deep, not can I really go into how they are using it. That is for next time. I am guessing that some of you have heard of and even explored some of these things. However, I’ve begun to formulate an idea of how the Cardinals are trying to holistically integrate these things into their system.
Force plates (by Forcedecks)
There are now multiple versions. I believe the Cardinals have some of this and believe that more are coming with the improvements being made in Jupiter.
- One version is essentially a flat plate from which a player will jump from squat position while the technology monitors acceleration and deceleration.
- A second (probably the most recognizable) is a modified mound with front and back plates that measure ground reaction forces (GRF) while a pitcher pitches. The two plates measure drive leg GRF (acceleration) and stride leg GRF (deceleration).
- The third version is a wall plate that provides the Athletic Shoulder Test (ASH) that works to measure strength along different points of the arms throwing path, particularly out near the release point.
The whole acceleration and deceleration concept revolves around the idea that once a pitcher strides and plants (either drop-and-drive or tall-and-fall), the body decelerates and creates a kinetic chain from the landing foot up through the legs, hips, torso, shoulder, elbow and wrist. The counter-force of deceleration creates the kinetic pivot point around which the pitcher twists his torso (and shoulder, etc.) and creates velocity and spin. The plates measure the macro level forces at the start of the kinetic chain. Other tech measures reaction forces at the back-end. I will touch on that below.
ArmCare Strength and Range of Motion Sensor – Measures release point strength. I’m unsure of the actual device (is it a wearable?), but it’s simple enough that pitchers can self-test and report the data. The results are used to determine range of motion exercises to increase range and strength and are believed to reduce elbow stress and elbow injuries.
Trackman
A technology that is becoming somewhat ubiquitous and a bit old-school, Trackman is the doppler radar technology that tracks pitches and hits for velocity, launch angle and spin rates. It’s in all MLB parks. As best as I can tell, it is the data feed for Baseball Savant.
It incorporates high speed cameras and radars to capture ball flight data (hit and/or pitched) and provides them real-time. You will see these in Jupiter on the back fields. Tripods behind the pitcher hold the cameras and radars. Tablets and screens on the field and benches allow observers to see what just happened.
Trajekt
A pitching machine unlike any I’ve seen in a batting cage mimics individual pitcher’s velocity and pitch shapes. Includes a projection or hologram of the pitcher throwing the baseball to give a feel for release point. It takes in data collected from other tech (like Trackman, below) from the last 3-5 appearances of that pitcher and tries to emulate that pitcher’s pitches.
It uses Rapsodo to gather spin, velocity, plate location, and even hitting statistics. It makes minor adjustments based upon what Rapsodo reports, until it gets to a certain point of accuracy, and then repeats until it falls out of accuracy (worn balls, etc).
The Cardinals, at last report, had two of these. One in St. Louis, one in Jupiter. Where in Jupiter, I do not know.
Rapsodo 2.0 is a ball flight monitor The Hitting Monitor delivers accurate, real-time swing data, including exit velocity, launch angle, and spin rate. Portability is a useful feature here. It can be setup and taken down. I would not use the word easily here, based on what I saw. Looked like the setup guys needed about 20-30 minutes to setup and calibrate.
Kinatrax
A motion capture technology that works at distance, capturing kinetic movement by players, in-game. The camera array (proprietary, of course) provides precise 3D joint location and bone segment orientation during sporting activities. The advanced feature here is that the player doesn’t have to wear anything unusual or be marked up before the capture session, so the team can capture in-game action. This type of technology is where bio-mechanics really comes into play, and the focus is not only on improving pitcher performance, but also on monitoring and improving pitcher health (more below).
Such a use might include using the Kinatrax to observe the kinetic chain reaction to the forces measured by the Force Plates. Do the hips turn in the optimum way, at the optimum time after the stride foot lands? Do the shoulder and elbow joints follow through that torso twist in sync, or behind (or ahead)? I might have this backwards, but I think a pitcher who has a release point behind the stride foot is either striding out too much or needs to get more extension. Stuff like that. PTs can design isolated exercises to improve either or both and more importantly, make the changes sticky by creating muscle memory.
Edgertronics
High speed cameras intended to capture really fast things in ways that can be slowed down. We’ve all seen those images where the slo-mo (which seems antiquated by comparison) shows us the spin and the path of the ball. These cameras do this at about 2,000 frames per second. If you think of the best spin rates in baseball, this tech breaks the image down to about 1 rotation of the ball for each video frame captured.
Hawkeye – In use at all MLB stadia, it uses a dozen or so cameras to track ball and player movement. MLB utilizes this feed to support the challenge system. I’m unsure exactly how individual teams and players use it, although it does capture player positioning and movement to a high degree of accuracy, so there is some potential there.
NordBord and the new Groinbar, a hip and groin strength measuring solution are being adopted by pitchers, but I don’t yet know much about them. It seems this field is changing fast. In the kinetic chain, the groin/hip area rotates ahead of the shoulder and arm and strength in this area translates to leverage and leverage translates into velocity and/or spin.
Wearables
The cutting edge of baseball tech right now. Technology that is integrated into the fabric players wear on or off the field. As we watched Sonny Gray constantly tug at his shirt, I’ve begin wondering if this is why. These include:
Post-game compression sleeves for pitchers coming off a mound performance. Icing is becoming out of vogue, I gather.
The Driveline Pulse Compression sleeve or Modus sleeve, which counts all throws and measures throwing intensity. Bullpen throws, long toss, even goofing around is counted and effort is measured. Works with workload management software. The key evolution is its now integrated with sleeves and other garments, instead of separate, bulky straps and markings that players did not always appreciate.
Sensor Edge and Vibe pressure plates in shoes. These measure workload, as well. Players spend a lot of time on their feet and this tech captures the cumulative effect.
Catapult Vector S7 GPS measures all movements. Analogous to a pet tracking device, only more accurate. Operating at 10 Hz and incorporating an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that includes an accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer, the Vector S7 is designed to capture detailed biomechanical and spatiotemporal data with high fidelity. That is a mouthful! They allow teams to track typical workload (chronic) and short-term workloads (acute) to see when players might be over-worked. Most applicable to pitchers and catchers.
A lot of this crosses over from using tech for skill optimization into being health and welfare monitoring. Teams, and I think the Cardinals may be a little ahead in this area, are using the volumes of data all this tech is producing to monitor workload, identify increasing injury risk potential, general fatigue (particularly as it relates to travel) along with in-game demands.
For example, while the ASH test done with wall plates might help identify a pitchers’ optimal extension, they can routinely test said pitchers to see if test results are moving away from baseline in a way that suggests fatigue or low-level injury. The old-school version of this … in 2006, when Mark Mulder got hurt, he didn’t know he was injured (shoulder) because it didn’t really hurt (any worse than it usually did). The trainer asked him to change a light bulb overhead and he couldn’t reach his arm straight up to do that simple task (ie. impingement) and off to the IL he went and was never the same. They’ve moved a bit beyond the light bulb. It’s a good thing, because light bulbs are LED now and never need changing!
I’m getting towards 1,700 words, which is a bit lengthy, so I will close here. Next week, I’ll introduce to you some Cardinal personnel you may never have heard of. These are the people that are trying to make sense out of all this data. Their goal is to build a performance model that tracks travel and fatigue management and in-game demands. They have some serious challenges in front of them. I will explore that next time.
