Athlete Results- Winter 2021-Spring 2022
December 6th, 2021. The Lab opened for the first assessments. That first week we welcomed 13 athletes and grew to about 40 at our peak. As a business, this was a great start. As trainers, we were ecstatic! Forty athletes and their parents trusted us to help them get better at hitting, pitching, or both while we had just opened. We didn’t want to let them down and since we are a data-driven facility, we wanted to track our athlete results. But what were we going to track?
For hitting, it was pretty straightforward as there are trackable outputs that were proven to be highly correlated to hitting success; bat speed, exit velocity, and barrel accuracy. We could track progress for all of these with a blast sensor and a hitting Rapsodo. As for pitching, we all know mound velocity increases a pitcher’s chance for success and makes all their other pitches better. However, beyond that, we weren’t sure what to track. The idea of throwing efficiency was there, but between the different ways of tracking it, we didn’t trust it. We thought about some sort of arsenal grade but didn’t have a way to properly track that over time as most of the kids in The Lab were constantly changing, adding, and just classifying pitches wrong which would make this way too inconsistent. During this next offseason, we plan to address those issues so that we can track progress, but for now, we mainly settled on mound velocity.
The Athletes
Time to meet our athletes. It was exciting to see the first group of athletes coming through The Lab, wanting to get better. We could see the hunger and since we misjudged our capacity, we changed our membership plan to what it is today so that all athletes had the same opportunity to get into The Lab multiple times a week. Here are the details about the OG Lab Rats that capitalized on this opportunity:
Athlete ages ranged from 11 to 30 with a mean of 15.34
Athletes per playing level:
High School and above: 20
Middle School: 11
Little League: 7
Total: 38
Each athlete had a different start date, but these are the athletes that were assessed and retested at some point during their training. On average, athletes trained for about 100 total days or about 33-34 in lab days.
3 athletes were Pitcher Only, 11 were Hitter Only, while the remaining 24 trained both as a hitter and pitcher
The Process
It’s hard to track progress without knowing where you started. With that being said, that is one of the reasons we have every athlete go through an assessment. During this process, we measure how the athlete moves and the different outputs they create. We keyed in on certain objective metrics that we could track at the time of the assessment and throughout their training. For hitters, these data points, or stats, were Max Bat Speed, Average Bat Speed, Max Exit Velocity, and Smash Factor. Looking back, we probably would’ve added in Average Exit Velocity, Average Distance, and Max Distance. But we wanted to keep it simple this first offseason and not track too many statistics. Pitchers, on the other hand, were focused on throwing velocity as that has the biggest impact on their performance as a whole.
After the athletes were assessed on their strengths and weaknesses, they meet with a trainer to discuss a plan. Pitchers were prescribed PlyoCare throwing drills to help clean up mechanical inefficiencies. Some pitchers also executed another series of drills in addition to Plyos, but this was added to everyday training a couple of months after we opened. This is why not every pitcher did additional work and something that will change going into the next offseason when we roll out our new drill prescribing system. After pitchers warmed up and completed their Plyo work, they would long toss. During the first 4-6 weeks, this is mainly what they did plus some recovery work after they were done long tossing. This was done in order to get their arms in shape, used to the volume, and ready to handle the stress of a velocity phase. With that time required to get in shape for a velocity phase, we ended up with 11 athletes on-ramped with enough time to do at least one week of Pulldown-based velocity. So for those few athletes, they would do Pulldowns in the pitching cage after long toss and before recovery. After 3-4 weeks of Pulldowns, they blended back to the mound and finished the off the next month with a combination of Mound Velo, Pitch Design, and Live At-Bats
Hitters were similar, except their corrective work/drills on done on the tee before progressing to front toss. During these drills, hitters will use different bats and balls to add constraints to help make the movement changes we are looking for. From there, they further progress into overhand toss, short box, or machine work based on what their training program calls for. As hitters got closer to the start of their season, short boxes were the most common method used at the end of hitting sessions. For most of these sessions, hitters either wore a Blast Sensor on their bat, hit with the Hitting Rapsodo on, or both.
Hitting is a little more simple, but athletes on both the hitting and pitching side were retested every 4-6 weeks. After each retest, the prescribed drills and training focus were updated.
The Results
Alright, now the reason we are all here. What’s great about being data-driven is tracking the results during training which creates excitement and satisfaction among both the athletes and trainers when a new personal record (PR) is achieved. At a base level, let’s look at the average gains all of the athletes made in the metrics we were tracking:
Average Bat Speed: + 2.54 mph
Max Bat Speed: + 4.30 mph
Smash Factor: + 0.04
Max Exit Velocity: + 6.61 mph
Mound Velocity: + 4.45 mph
While we did not meet the goals we had for ourselves (+5 mound velocity, +10 max exit velocity, +5 bat speed), those goals were set pretty randomly on the basis of they sounded nice. With that being said, we are stoked with the results from this first offseason that was shortened because of when The Lab opened.
However, we wanted to dive further into these athlete averages, as there were a couple of huge variables among our athletes. So it is worth looking into these variances in athletes that trained this winter at The Lab and bucket those results accordingly.
Gains Based On Length Of Stay
First, let’s look into gains made based on the time spent training at The Lab. Even though the average stay was about 100 days, the shortest amount of time was 24 days while the longest is 159. Bucketing athletes into lengths of stay seems like the obvious thing to do. Besides, we had a hunch that athletes who spent more time training In-Lab would see bigger gains. So we had to see if it was true. Now let’s take a look:
Our hypothesis that those who train longer was generally confirmed with this data. Athletes who trained 120+ days (4+ months) saw the most gains in Mound Velocity, MPHs of Avg Bat Speed, and Max Exit Velocity while also coming in second in MPHs of Max Bat Speed. Those who trained 90-119 days saw the second most gains in Max Exit Velo while having the most in MPHs of Max Bat Speed and Smash Factor.
This makes sense to us here at The Lab for a few different reasons. The first one is simply that an athlete is in a new environment and learning the ins and outs of just simply training. It can be overwhelming to be in a new place with trainers and other athletes you may not know. So getting acclimated is a task in itself. Second, athletes may not be coming in fresh off a season, especially this first year. Having opened in December, most of our initial athletes were coming off a period of not playing. It takes time to get their arm, and body in general, back in shape. That’s why we do see some gains in the shorter stays but we tend to think of those as the natural, getting back in shape gains.
Lastly, when developing a new skill or changing ingrained patterns, there’s a moment of getting worse. The new movement is uncomfortable and hard to repeat. The athlete spends some time thinking internally while understanding what he is trying to feel throughout drills they may not have performed. So there tends to be a slight drop at first, but when these changes become more natural, athletes tend to take off.
There’s one more note on the pitching side, as it makes even more logical sense when relating velocity training to strength training. That being the longer you strength train, the more weight you can lift. This comes from the Stress-Recovery-Adaptation curve. Weightlifting and certain parts of gaining velocity rely on stressing the body and muscles. After that initial stress, our body needs to recover. This is why Recovery throwing days are beneficial and we spread out the highest intent days to the beginning and end of the week. Allowing for the body to recover gives it the chance to adapt and handle more stress, more weight, or velocity/torque. So spending more time training allows the body to continue to build and adapt to the stress of throwing harder (and swing/rotate faster for hitters). There’s a timetable that can’t be rushed with pitching making it imperative for pitchers to start to train earlier so they can get further in-depth and complete the different phases of the offseason.
Gains Based on Playing Level
This first off-season we had four distinct groups of playing levels that our athletes fell into Little League, Middle School, High School, and Beyond High School (Other). The group of “Other” were two gap year college hitters and two local men’s league pitchers (including myself). Here are the averages by those playing levels:
Overall, we see good gains across the board minus the average bat speed of our two gap-year hitters. However, those two made up for it by leading the pack in max speed and coming in second in Exit Velo. Every level managed to lead a category while the Middle School athletes led two. So a pretty even split.
Judging gains based on playing was a good thought, to begin with as we thought we would see a certain trend, but we are not sure that happened by just looking at the graphs above. So we added up the total gains for each level to see if that gives us any more insight:
Little League: 21.5
Middle School: 18.4
High School: 15.7
Other: 17.0
This showed the trend we were expecting. Little Leaguers tend to be the rawest of all the playing levels. They are not particularly strong and lack the coordination of the older athletes. Some of our Little Leaguers have never heard of Plyos, let alone throw them. So there is a lot of low-hanging fruit to be had just by helping them learn how to move/throw and get stronger. Therefore it would make sense that they saw the most gains.
Middle School was not far behind. This group is similar to the Little League group as there was a lot of low-hanging fruit for most of them. They were lacking in both the skill and strength side. It stands to reason that the High School group had a better baseline in skill and needed to develop more strength. Being in the latter part of the offseason and we were just getting started, we lacked a solid strength program. So although we still see gains from the High School and Other groups, they are both the lowest gains overall. However, there is a possibility that we see more from the older, more skilled groups as weight training becomes an integrated part of their training.
Looking Back
Overall, we feel pretty successful about what we were able to do in this first abbreviated offseason. There were some ups and downs. We had to rebuild our plyo wall, overbooked the facility in terms of trainer-athlete ratio, and even had a kid almost break his arm at hockey while another his finger at basketball. Kids periodically caught COVID and missed training time and others had family vacations. We rearranged and changed things continuously as we found ways to make things better and training more efficient. Even with all these obstacles and variables, we continued to improve and get better. That will always be a constant at The Lab from our athletes to trainers to data analysts to whoever steps foot in the facility.
Among all those variables, what do we actually know? Well, we know we don’t completely suck at our jobs. We were able to build programs that successfully increased Bat Speed, Exit Velocity, Contact Quality, and Mound Velocity on average. But building the program is only one part of it. Our first initial group of athletes bought into a new style of training, a different process, and new equipment which gave us (and them) a true look at how we develop athletes. The buy-in and hard work were all our athletes so the credit goes to them. We only build the program, they execute it.
So we don’t suck and our athletes are awesome, that’s great! What else?
We also know, based on the data we collected, that it appears as an athlete’s skill improves, they need an all-around program addressing strength and mobility issues. This is where a majority of the lowest hanging fruit lies with those athletes compared to the younger, less skilled ones who are still learning to properly throw/swing and move fast. Lastly, we saw that those who trained longer saw more gains. This isn’t groundbreaking and neither was the point about High Schoolers needing strength work. Sometimes the obvious needs to be stated and validated which we were able to do.
Going Forward
If we aren’t going to continually improve, then what are we doing? Well after writing this whole darn thing, I have a good idea:
Addition of Strength Training— we are already adding in a couple of strength tests, but we are working on a complete strength assessment that will be a part of the assessment week. This will include a mobility exam and tests involving force output. This will be implemented in the fall and slowly rolled out with our current athletes in the summer.
Better Tracking of Pitching KPIs— we will be adding an efficiency metric to the testing of our pitchers and a way to track arsenal grades. Throwing hard is great, gets you the looks, and makes your stuff better, but we need to measure the other stuff to create the best overall pitcher.
Encourage stays of at least 3 months— it’s likely (not guaranteed) that after 3 months an athlete will see a good amount of gains across the board. Buying in for those 3 months gives an athlete a chance to get the most out of training here and truly see how good they can get.
Better scheduling process— the initial way to schedule, the length of time of sessions, and expectations of how long everything takes; this next off-season will be a little more efficient on that end now that we have experience on the best way to make things flow in The Lab. This may seem like a little thing, but it will make everything better.
More visible athlete metrics— starting in the fall we hope to have an athlete dashboard that will allow them to see all their numbers in one place and how they stack up against their peers.
Redesign of Assessment Week— Last but not least, we will be redesigning assessment week that will include the strength assessment and a better flow for the athletes and trainers.
So there you have it. Even though it was a new process, training philosophy, and style, we managed to make significant improvements with a majority of our first 38 athletes. What’s even better is, as we noted, there are obvious ways for training at The Lab to get better. We are already in the process of making those changes which is great, not for us but for our athletes. As we get better at our jobs, learn more, and create better systems and processes, it makes it easier for the athlete to train with confidence.
If you liked what you read, like where we are headed, and want to train at The Lab, Vermont’s only Data-Driven facility, then reach out now. You can either email us at 802baseballlab@gmail.com, fill out this Athlete Interest Form, or the form below. From now through the end of Summer 2022, we are waiving the Assessment fee for those who commit to 2+ months of training (let’s be real, you saw the data… you’re going to want 3 months). Athletes still get assessed, but get to save the $200 it costs! So reach out now and strat developing your game today!
