SportTechie’s Athletes Voice series features the views and opinions of the athletes who use and are powered by technology. SportTechie spoke with Yankees reliever Adam Ottavino about his tech-infused, home-brew pitching laboratory and the impact of advanced data on baseball.
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After a disappointing 2017 season with the Rockies, reliever Adam Ottavino spent a week training at the progressive Driveline Baseball facility near Seattle. Upon returning to his native New York City, he wanted to continue the advanced methods he learned from Driveline’s data-driven pitching incubator and needed space. His father-in-law owned an empty storefront on St. Nicholas Avenue in Harlem, so Ottavino moved in with some new tools and began refining his repertoire.
In 2018, Ottavino’s strikeouts skyrocketed, and he nearly halved the rate at which he allowed hits. Prior to this season, he signed a three-year, $27-million contract with his hometown Yankees. So far in 2019, the right-hander currently has a 1.69 ERA and a 266 adjusted ERA+, which is an advanced metric normalizing the statistic based on ballpark and league averages. Ottavino’s ERA+ is sixth-best among all American League pitchers who have thrown at least 20 innings.
Ottavino grew up in Brooklyn and starred at Northeastern University before the Cardinals selected him in the first round of the 2006 MLB draft. He struggled as a starting pitcher with the Cardinals but became a productive reliever after the Rockies claimed him off waivers in April 2012—and an elite set-up man after his reinvention. He underwent Tommy John surgery in May 2015 but told SportTechie why he won’t wear a Motus sensor or change his unorthodox delivery.
Youth Metrics
“Things like the radar, I think that’s had a massive effect on how baseball players are valued. From being a little kid and seeing what it takes, miles-per-hour-wise to get noticed, that’s already one place that technology mattered and showed its head.
“I remember the first time I was clocked, I was in high school already—probably a sophomore. That’s when you start to be aware of how fast you throw. [I was] not fast. I probably threw 80. Actually, I think 80’s underrated, 80’s pretty fast.”
Big League Data
“When I was with the Cardinals, right after I got drafted, they did a couple things. The first thing they did was brought us—a couple of the ‘top pitching prospects’—brought us to Birmingham and [the American Sports Medicine Institute]. They put [sensors] all over us and tracked our deliveries and told us where you were relative to the normative range of pitchers. That was probably the first feedback I got, technology wise, on my delivery.
“And then the very next year, I was in a mini-camp where for the first time they put a TrackMan on me while throwing. They read all the spin rates of everything we were throwing and tracked our pitches through the zone, saw how they moved a little bit. At that point, a lot of people didn’t really know what any of the numbers meant. I remember some of the initial feedback I got was that the pitch that I spun the best was my changeup—which, knowing what I know now, makes it awful.
“That evolved to start seeing PITCHf/x numbers coming around and all sort of things that I always was curious about. I figured, if they were reading the numbers, then maybe I could read into something from the very best pitchers’ numbers and see what could be learned from that. I tried to, but a lot of the stuff wasn’t publicly shared for a while, and then eventually it started to be. It was sort of a slow build, and then all of a sudden the flood gates opened. The awakening happened where everybody understood about spin rates, spin axis, and shapes of your pitches, extension, release height, and how all that type of stuff comes into play.”
Self-Tracking
“I bought a Rapsodo and an Edgertronic at the same time. I had thrown off a Rapsodo before I bought it with other people’s, but I felt like that was important to have to basically track some of the metrics of my pitches. But, with me, the big breakthrough comes with the Edgertronic. I think that’s something I’ve always instinctively knew would be useful—seeing what happens at release. But the technology wasn’t really there yet. And I didn’t have the money if it did exist. Edgertronic was the big thing.
“The Edgertronic is the ‘Why.’ That’s what it answers. The other devices will give you the ‘What’s happening,’ but the Edgertronic will give you the why because you can see how you’re releasing the ball at the moment of truth there. Because of that, when you throw a good one, you can see what you’re doing right and then come up with a cue to practice the right way and streamline your ability to get more consistent with the right thing.”
Training in Harlem
“[In 2017], I did use a Rapsodo quite a bit, but [in 2018], I really didn’t. I didn’t care any more about my metrics. They are what they are. Every time I threw a ‘pen, I would use the Edgertronic and also a regular camera, so I could watch my pitches from behind and tally them by number. If, while I was watching, I was like ‘That is what I’m looking for,’ then I could go look at the Edgertronic clip and see how I did it.
“Technology wise, that was it. I was doing other things, like different sized baseballs, command training stuff. I had a radar gun, too, with a radar board which allowed me to monitor my intensity level a little better inside where sometimes it’s hard to tell.”
Beyond the Numbers
“I think if you’re going down the Motus rabbit hole, you’re probably looking to modify something in your arm action to stay healthier, and for me, I have no real interest in that because I’m only good because of the weird way I throw. I’ll take the risk of getting hurt to produce a higher level of success at this point. I’ve made it this far and already had surgery once. It is what it is at this point.
“I try not to get too crazy with it, but I pay attention to my recovery and what works, what doesn’t work. A lot of it is just experience over time. I do a lot of stuff with weighted balls, command training, cuff weights, and different types of exercises. I don’t like to do too much of the tracking devices in terms of your blood content or any of that stuff.”
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