The sport of baseball is at an interesting crossroads. While Major League Baseball took in a record $9 billion in revenue last year, and the average value of the 30 MLB teams is $1.2 billion, the sport’s average audience viewer hovers around 55 years old. So while business is currently booming for baseball’s top league, many fear the foundation of the game is eroding because it is failing to resonate with younger generations.
This aging issue is often blamed on the slower pace of baseball going against the acceleration of everyday society as we become a digitally entwined species who not only demands but expects information and feedback at increasingly quicker rates.
However, there is an intriguing technological baseball trio forming down at LakePoint, a state-of-the-art sporting complex about a thirty minute drive north of downtown Atlanta, that is hoping to bring a renewed passion to hitting that is fueled by simulation, swing analytics and cognitive training.
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Axon Sports, Diamond Kinetics and HitTrax are three cutting-edge baseball tech companies that we have been closely following as they have developed from startup to established ball player training resources over the last few years. Now the three are joining forces at LakePoint to build a program called Hitter’s Revolution. This program will combine the three technologies of each company to take hitters through a three step training experience. First, Axon Sports will assess and train players’ pitch recognition skills. Second, Diamond Kinetics will measure and analyse key metrics of their swing. Third, HitTrax will track data on each hit as it leaves the bat.
Axon Sports
Axon trains the cognitive abilities of athletes, an area of training that they believe is the next frontier in sports. For Hitter’s Revolution, Axon will help ball players gain hundreds of visual reps in just a few minutes, develop the ability to recognize many different types of pitches and ultimately become better at using the 0.5 second that a batter has when tracking a pitch. Such cognitive training will smoothly transition into the next set of skills that a batter needs: the proper swing.
Jason Sada, President of Axon explained his excitement for getting involved at LakePoint, “Axon Sports is thrilled to bring our tools to elite baseball players. For the first time, these athletes will be able to assess their ability to recognize pitches and train the brain the way college and pro athletes currently do. Further, working with our partners, Diamond Kinetics and HitTrax, we are offering the first comprehensive hitting solution to the market. Players, coaches, parents and college recruiters will have insights into a player’s skills and drive performance improvement like never before.”
Diamond Kinetics
Once the batter has used their cognitive detecting skills to identify a good looking pitch, the swing itself takes just 0.2 seconds. But in this fraction of a second Diamond Kinetics gathers enormous amounts of data that can provide real-time after each swing. Diamond Kinetics measures eleven key metrics (speed, quickness, power and control to name a few) and allows young hitters to instantly compare themselves to their databases of collegiate and professional hitters.
“We believe at Diamond Kinetics that technology has the ability to significantly impact how players and coaches learn and improve. This impact becomes significantly more powerful when you align and integrate best in class technologies each focused on unique elements of hitting. I believe the Hitter’s [R]evolution experience will be a powerful, fun, eye-opening experience for the many great players and coaches visiting LakePoint this summer,” said C.J. Handron, Co-Founder and CEO, Diamond Kinetics.
HitTrax
After the batter has key data points on their swing the next step in the process is perhaps the most obvious: contact. When the hitter has detected a good pitch and executed a fundamentally sound swing they can then use HitTrax to watch the flight of the ball virtually move through any MLB stadium they chose. Additionally, HitTrax captures data points such as exit velocity, launch angle, distance and also provides scores and rankings for a competition and gamification component for the hitters in training.
Mike Donfrancesco, Founder of HitTrax, is excited to have his technology help form this formidable baseball tech trio in LakePoint. “The event is a true “revolution” as three pioneering technologies are teaming up to deliver a true one-of-a-kind experience. While the integration of the data is impressive, we’ve paid a great deal of attention to the details as we felt it was imperative to deliver an engaging and compelling experience for the players. We look forward to an exciting summer in this incredible venue.”
Producing hitting machines
The combination of Axon, Diamond Kinetics and HitTrax hopes to form an end to end process where hitters get specialized training in all components of their swing. It’s almost as if the three have formed a sort of hitters factory where a player enters and hones their pitch recognition skills. Then moves along to analyze and deeply understand the mechanics of their swing. And finally tracks the results and comes out on the other side as a hitting machine.
Neal Freeman, President of LakePoint sporting community certainly sees the potential for these three baseball tech companies to come together and bring new hi-tech training opportunities for young baseball players. “LakePoint is excited to welcome three cutting-edge sports users in Axon Sports, Diamond Kinetics, and HitTrax to our state-of-the-art baseball facility. The innovative technologies used will bring an exciting addition to the guest experience and continue our mission to be the premier sports vacation destination.”
While technology is absolutely transforming the way athletes train across the sporting world, the phrase “innovative technologies” when specifically combined with the sport of baseball brings an extra sense of growth and progression that the sport seems to desperately need. It will certainly be very interesting to see how these three companies and their technologically advanced program can work together in LakePoint to hopefully encourage a new young crop of athletes to see the game in a new light.
Batter up.