The Houston Astros have announced their official partnership with Blast Motion, which will make the Easton Power Sensor the official swing monitor of the team. The announcement comes just a few weeks after Blast Motion launched three new apps that can help professional baseball teams.
We have covered product updated with Blast Motion on numerous occasions. The company recently began a partnership with a professional golfer, but this is their first deal with a major North American professional sports team.
By partnering with Blast Motion the Astros will be able to monitor their players using the Easton Power Sensor, which helps break down swings using five key metrics: time to contact, efficiency index, power index, swing speed and blast factor (which is a cumulative score from 0-100 based on all the other metrics).
Blast Motion partnered with Easton to bring the Power Sensor, a lightweight monitoring device that is easily placed on the handle of a baseball bat, to analyze a users’ swing in real time. The Astros plan on using this technology at all levels of their organization going forward. And their director of baseball operations, Brandon Taubman, sees this new partnership as one that will be very beneficial.
“We are excited about the swing analytics the Blast Motion solution brings to our organization, benefiting players, coaches, and the entire baseball operations teams for both the minor and major league teams… The technology is portable, smart, and non-intrusive, providing invaluable information that complements the expertise within our organization.”
The Astros partnership with this advanced wearable technology company comes in the wake of Major League Baseball announcing that they will be the first major U.S. professional sports leagues to allow wearables during regular season games. The Motus Baseball Sleeve can be worn by players to monitor the stress that is being exerted on their elbows; as a way to help curb the prevalence of Tommy John surgeries. And the Zephyr Bioharness, allows teams to monitor players’ heart and breathing rates during games.
MLB has clearly started down a progressive path towards adopting new sports technologies, especially wearables. Blast Motion’s vice president of sales, Mike Woods, is very excited about their partnership with the Astros.
“Being selected by the Houston Astros as the official swing analyzer is an honor and a great validation for our technology… The Astros now have access to the most accurate and consistent swing analysis technology on the market… We solved this challenge by partnering with the Astros to optimize the pro team apps to match major and minor league training session workflows.”
The Astros will be able to analyze their players swings much more effectively going forward, and will truly be able to quantify if coaching and training is making a player a better hitter. The new Blast Motion pro team apps will help make the process of collecting swing and performance metrics at all times very easy throughout all levels of their organization.
With the addition of three new apps, Power Sensor Pro, Power Sensor Coach and Sensor Admin, players and coaches will now receive more information that will help them to manage and coach players. The Astros will also be able to use Blast Motion’s video technology to easily monitor and analyze a player’s swing without any user generated editing needed.
With MLB being relatively progressive in terms of wearable technology entering the field of play, it might not be long before we see technology like the Easton Power Sensor, being used during regular season games. And if they do start becoming more accepted, the Astros will be at the forefront of this movement.
