The 'Galaxtronic'

In 2018 I was the Video Intern with KC’s Low-A affiliate in Lexington, KY. It was a straightforward job considering I had done the same job (plus more) the year before with Houston in Davenport, IA. So, when I was looking for a job in 2019, I wanted something better than video intern. Nothing came. I stuck with KC because I could feel there was a shift from their extremely old school and outdated methodology of developing players, to the new school analytical approach. The organization invested in Blast Motion (which I worked with in Davenport) and Rapsodo. These duties fell to me as the video intern. I was ecstatic that we were moving in this direction.

As the first two months of the season roll along, I did what was asked and got all the data needed. But one thing bugged me; players would ask if certain metrics were good, what other metrics meant, and how to improve them. I had no idea; I was only told how to operate them. This is when I fell down the rabbit hole of pitch design. Using online resources, I taught myself what everything meant. I learned everything about spin rate, spin efficiency, horizontal and vertical break, tunneling, etc. There was a day when everything clicked, and I could actually understand what I was seeing on the iPad. But one thing was missing: what good were these Rapsodo sessions if we did not have a high-speed camera, such as an Edgertronic? This is where things changed.

I had the Samsung Galaxy S10+ phone and noticed that it had a ‘Super Slow Mo’ setting on it. So I grabbed an extra tripod and set up my phone during Rapsodo sessions. It was amazing. The pitching coach and pitchers loved seeing what their hand was doing at release, and they were able to see if what they felt they were doing was actually what they were doing. I came to call it the Galaxtronic. Not only was it cool to see slow-mo video, but it taught me even more about pitching.
I took it a step further and used the Rapsodo excel file and overlayed the relevant information on top of the video.