Need A Swing Fix? There’s An App For That - BaseballAmerica.com

NEXT>

Baseball America

My Account | Log Out Home | Subscribe � COLLEGE DRAFT FANTASY HIGH SCHOOL INTERNATIONAL MAJORS MINORS STATS & SCORES VIDEOS VIEWPOINTSTORE

Home / FOLLOW US Majors / Article

Need A Swing Fix? There’s An App For That STATS SEARCH

� FeedbackMay 1, 2015 by DeMarco Williams Quick Clicks Like Tweet 7 0 8 130 2015 Draft Database 2015 Draft: The BA 500 2015 Draft Organization Reports 2015 Top 10 Prospects CWS Scoreboard 25th Anniversary Top 100 Prospects High School Top 25 Minor League Transactions Under Armour All-America Game Spotlight Trade Central DraftKings Fantasy Salary Table

Don Slaught was a numbers guy as a player, when he hit .283 over 16 big league seasons (Photo by Morris Fostoff)

Don Slaught’s current job is going pretty well, so you won’t find him complaining much. But should you prod just a bit, he will hint at one regret. SUBSCRIBE

“I wish I could play with the knowledge that I have now,” says Slaught, a platoon catcher in the majors in the 1980s and ’90s who tallied more than 1,000 hits with teams such as the Royals,

http://www.baseballamerica.com/majors/need-swing-fix-theres-app/[6/29/2015 10:08:36 PM] Need A Swing Fix? There’s An App For That - BaseballAmerica.com

Rangers and Pirates. “There were things that I was still doing wrong that could have helped me even more.”

What Slaught is modestly omitting is that his batting average did steadily ascend during his career. In fact, he hit .264 in 1986, .283 in ’88, .300 in ’90 and a robust .345 in ’92. By the time he retired in ’97, Slaught’s resume included six seasons where he had at least 200 at-bats and hit over .300.

Slaught has always been a numbers guy. Even when he was a spry young fellow at UCLA in the � early 1980s, he was enamored with statistics. “I did a study with my professor on the marginal revenue product of a ballplayer,” he says. “In other words, we took five years of major league PRINT data and we threw it into a supercomputer.” � Mind you, the only WAR people knew back then was an R&B/funk group out of Long Beach. “If EDITION you gave me the ERAs, the team batting average, home runs and that kind of stuff,” Slaught 78% OFF says, “we could predict winning percentage with 90 percent reliability.” NEWSSTAND

That love of data is essentially what led Slaught to the venture RightView Pro, a Southern California company that’s been part of the movement to slowly change the way batters approach DIGITAL the plate for more than a decade. With smartphone camera lens kits, memory cards, apps and other easy-to-use gadgets, the video analysis system seems to have hit its stride. EDITION Coaches and players see the inefficiencies in swings and have the capacity to make adjustments ADDITIONAL 25% with relative ease. And because it’s licensed by , RVP can produce side- OFF by-side video comparisons with studs like Andrew McCutchen and Robinson Cano. Renew But no matter if we’re talking about the Seattle Mariners or West Seattle High, it all comes down to seeing your errors and making proper adjustments.

“Back in 2003,” Slaught says, “Greg Walker got the hitting coach job with the . TOP ARTICLES He called me like three days later (and said), ‘Don, Frank Thomas is all messed up. How do I tell him?’ Best Tools: July 2 Prospects Monday, June 29, 2015 “I said, ‘You don’t tell him. You take a picture and show him what he used to do when he was hitting .350 and what he’s doing now hitting .250. Just put it in his locker and he’ll come down Every year at Baseball America, we survey and say, ‘What is this?’ and you’ll get your chance.’ ” managers from low Class A to the majors to bring you our annual Best Tools survey, picking winners He did. Thomas finished the year with 42 home runs and 105 RBIs. of the best tools in […]

Union Men Minor League Transactions: June 19- 25 Much like RVP, Zepp is another California-based company giving young sluggers a visual tutorial Monday, June 29, 2015 about what they’re doing properly and not with the bat by reviewing swings through the use of 3- Preseason Top 100 Prospects Kyle Freeland, D analytics found on an app and on-device sensor. Hector Olivera and Alex Reyes all go on the DL, “There’s a lot of power in being more aware of what’s going on with your swing,” says Paul plus the identity of the worst-hitting prospect of the first half. Official minor league […] Papageorge, Zepp’s senior vice president of marketing. “Whether you’re a player or a coach, to get the breakthrough, to be able to better understand your swing, it means so much. We’ve Kay Impresses, Reflects On Advice always tried to coach and teach and learn things like ‘short to the ball’ and ‘attack angles.’ Now, From Matz we’re actually able to measure it instantly and see if we’re improving in those areas.” Monday, June 29, 2015

Once Papageorge names a few of the line’s endorsers—the list ranges from 2014 American CARY, N.C.—Lefthander Steven Matz dazzled in League MVP Mike Trout to Tim Walton, head coach of the 2014 NCAA champion University of his major league debut Sunday at Citi Field, about 50 miles down the Long Island Expressway from his Florida’s softball team—the products essentially sell themselves. But on the off chance that shiny hometown of Stony Brook, N.Y. He […] trophies aren’t convincing enough, Zepp’s simplicity sure is. Pros Set To Represent U.S. At Pan Am Once the sensor is attached to the end of a bat—Zepp also analyzes golf swings and tennis Games In Toronto strokes with detailed measurements—and the player hits the field, thousands of pieces of data Monday, June 29, 2015 are collected and conclusions for improvement are drawn. DURHAM, N.C.—The United States will be looking Do you need to angle your bat more to pull to your left? Are you repeatedly missing your sweet to take home gold next month in Toronto at the Pan spot? Could your hips be preventing you from distributing optimal force? With a click here and a American Games after taking home silver in 2011. look there, anyone can find their answers. On Monday, less than […]

http://www.baseballamerica.com/majors/need-swing-fix-theres-app/[6/29/2015 10:08:36 PM] Need A Swing Fix? There’s An App For That - BaseballAmerica.com

Stretching Scholarship Dollars Key To Of course, companies such as Zepp and RVP aren’t the first ones to address these kinds of College Success questions with a futuristic eye. The likes of Hittinguru 3D and Motion Pro, not to mention a Tuesday, June 23, 2015 dugout full of swing-assessing apps, have all stepped to the plate with varying levels of success. But where others have swung and foul tipped, Zepp’s partnership with the MLB Players In late March, Stanford announced it was raising an Association (nothing like seeing how your swing stacks up to David Ortiz’s) and its overall user- important financial aid threshold. Previously, any friendliness keep it going strong. family with a yearly household income of $100,000 or less could expect to contribute nothing […] And that’s never been more evident than with the April debut of the Zepp Coaches Center, a sort of site-within-a-site for leaders on all levels for software demonstrations, drill tips and other helpful bits of information to employ.

“We understand the life of a coach,” Papageorge says. “There’s a lot to running a practice. We want to make it as easy as possible for coaches to adopt the technology.”

Trevor Stocking, Zepp’s baseball product manager, adds: “We wanted to speak their language (with the Coaches Center). We do come from the Silicon Valley, but our background is coaching and getting down in the dirt, and that’s how we want everything to come out.”

But no matter how many times skippers watch videos or how many occasions players download FACEBOOK TWITTER apps, when it ultimately comes time to connect an Easton bat with a Rawlings ball, instincts and preparedness are the most important factors. Baseball America “You can’t think and hit,” says Slaught, squandering any worry you may have about young Like players having information overload at the plate. “You can’t do a complicated task with conscious You like this. Like thought. Basically, when you’re hammering a nail, you’re not thinking about the release of your elbow or releasing your wrist. You’re just looking at the nail. If you swing and miss, you just News Feed swing again.” Baseball America With the right data, though, that number of misses should come down significantly. 5 hrs

DeMarco Williams is a freelance writer based in Atlanta. For subscribers ($), Aaron Judge was the ' best prospect in the Like Tweet 7 0 8 first half. http://bba.am/7Qrpge 130

Majors |

ADD A COMMENT 01:57

99 Likes · 6 Comments · 19 Shares 1 Comment BaseballAmerica.com 1 Login You and 139,371 others like Baseball America.139,371 � people like Baseball America. Comment Share

� Recommend � Share Sort by Best Baseball America 7 hrs

Hudson Belinsky looks at two Tournament Join the discussion…

obsessivegiantscompulsive • 2 months ago Nice article. Technology for this is getting so good, I wish I was my son's age so that I could play around more with that tech.

Regarding "You’re just looking at the nail. If you swing and miss, you just swing again,” it is not quite the same. If you swing and miss in baseball, you just swing again. You swing and miss in hammering a nail, you might be missing a finger (or at least it would be severely swollen).

http://www.baseballamerica.com/majors/need-swing-fix-theres-app/[6/29/2015 10:08:36 PM]