Every once in a while, adding one and one makes a lot more than two. More generally, there are times when — as Aristotle famously said — “the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.” For instance, most people love cake, but have no interest in consuming raw eggs, cake mix, and flour independently. Ergo, the cake is much greater than the sum of its parts. And while Aristotle likely wasn’t thinking of baked goods when he coined his famous quote, he almost certainly didn’t have the coupling of baseball and softball technologies on his mind either. However, by seamlessly integrating their flagship baseball and softball products, sport technology companies Diamond Kinetics and InMotion Systems have proven to the sports world that they can add one and one and make .400 (well, make an astoundingly high batting average).
Diamond Kinetics (DK), was co-founded in 2013 by Dr. William Clark and CJ Handron. DK’s product — understandably referred to as SwingTracker — was released in late 2014 and uses inertial measurement units (IMU’s) to report greater than 10,000 discrete units of data that collectively detail every element of a baseball or softball player’s swing.
SwingTracker is a small device that attaches to the knob of a bat, and thus does not impact the player’s swing and/or grip on the bat. All of the data gathered by SwingTracker breaks each individual swing down into four categories: speed, quickness, control, and power, with several of the categories broken down into more specific subcategories. Each of these four components of the swing are given a score from 1-10 based on how their respective results compare to whatever skill level and age group the particular hitter is in, and the four component scores are averaged to give an overall swing score. All of this data gives coaches and players the opportunity to learn from past swings and improve upon them for the future.
While SwingTracker tells a hitter and their coach everything that happens before and while contact is made with a ball, InMotion Systems’ product — also understandably called HitTrax — details what occurs once the ball leaves the bat. InMotion Systems was founded by Mike Donfrancesco in 2011, and released HitTrax in late 2013, roughly a year before SwingTracker came into being.
The HitTrax device itself is located just in front (but not in the path of the ball) of where a hitter is standing, so that it can record data right before a ball crosses the plane of the plate, and right after the ball is hit. For a batted ball, HitTrax most notably records exit ball velocity, distance of hit, and launch angle and elevation, but also takes note of batting average, slugging percentage, OPS, and more for an entire hitting session; on top of that, everything about the pitches thrown during a given session is by design. And similar to how scoring swings works for SwingTracker, hits in HitTrax are graded relative to a particular skill level and age group, and the data can be analyzed to improve how a batter hits the ball.
So when taking a look at both companies, it seems like SwingTracker and HitTrax are meant to be together, doesn’t it? Not to mention that many who use both SwingTracker and HitTrax had been requesting a marriage of the two.
Fortunately for baseball players, at the 2015 American Baseball Coaches Association Conference, members of the SwingTracker and HitTrax teams decided that the two technologies were indeed meant to work together, and the integration began. With baseball becoming more and more of an analytical sport every day, players and coaches alike are turning to advanced statistics — namely the ones presented by SwingTracker and HitTrax — to improve performance.
Sure, baseball is still very much a game of holistic fundamentals, but breaking down a swing and a hit into their more individualized elements affords players and coaches the opportunity to take a more focused approach towards better results. So as SwingTracker and HitTrax emerged as the leading resources for making that happen, it was no surprise that “the two came together really nicely.”
Mike Donfrancesco (of InMotion) and Jeff Schuldt (the Chief Commercial Officer at DK) sum up the integration of SwingTracker and HitTrax, and the result of the integration, quite effectively. “Presenting an integrated solution in one package is the linkage of cause and effect to enable the coach and player to move from analysis to action in pursuing player improvement. In bringing this linked insight to coaches and players we expect we will uncover new questions and believe that we can continue to apply a collaborative approach to solving them using both our current technologies and those that will certainly emerge over time.”
Independently, SwingTracker and HitTrax are separate pieces of a puzzle, each giving coaches and players only part of the opportunity to augment performance — the coupling of the two technologies is what ultimately glues the puzzle pieces together.
The integration of SwingTracker and HitTrax is a massive win for the entire baseball analytics industry and community. It affords any and all people involved with baseball the opportunity to learn about swings and hits simultaneously with unprecedented ease, and thus improve the two with unified accuracy.
