Driveline R&D Podcast – Détails, épisodes et analyse

Fun episode this week that gets into the nitty gritty of one of Driveline's fastest growing products - Driveline Academy! Had Jeremy Tecktiel, Asst Dir of Dirveline Academy (past TRAQ Project Manager for the software heads in audience!), come on and talk the tradeoff of teaching kids to throw and hit harder versus prioritizing winning as many games as possible at the youth level as well as the trials and tribulations of getting such a large and complex product off the ground...now in multiple locations! (WA & AZ) Also swapped loose stories of both of our mascot backgrounds and trivia triumps (or lack thereof!).

Timestamps:

0:00 Intros & Light Degen Talk

3:03 Jeremy's Background & Academy Product

6:05 On Field Challenges for Driveline's Academy Team...Sure we're hitting/throwing harder but how do we handle bunts??

10:20 Balance Value of Future Player Dev'l vs Winning Games Right Now

12:20 Communications & Expectations with Parents

17:45 Current Academy Team and Tryouts Construction

30:58 Driveline Academy's Unique Warmups (Which Plyos Do We Use?)

33:53 Value of Massive High Fidelity Youth Datasets (MoCap, Pulse, Blast, etc)

38:51 Jeremy's Background As A Mascot!!

41:45 Cara's Background As A Mascot!!!

46:15 Jeremy the TriviaMaster

53:10 Harry Potter Trivia Story + Extended HP Rambling

1:05:44 Driveline Academy in AZ

1:13:45 Training the Youth on Defense

1:17:05 Training Youth Command + Youth Umpire Stoies (Including Jeremy being tossed!!)

1:22:00 Academy Strategy on Breaking Balls

Twitterz:

Alex Caravan: https://twitter.com/Alex_Caravan

Jeremy Tecktiel: https://twitter.com/jeremytecktiel

Banger quad epi when ya boi wasn't on the edge of his seat trying to get into frame (made a snap decision on not messing around with the camera and was running low on time, plus figured Aydt, Stokey and Herzie were good looking enough to man the stage) -- we talked about a loooot of goodies from Herzie's experiences overseas, DL first impressions and running pro sales, along with the Hitting Dept MLB Hitting Product evolution and why smash factor balls are selling like hot cakes! And in a segment that'll fire up Kyle Boddy, Cara shares some inside Driveline Winter Meeting story memes... :shushing-finger-emoji:

Timestamps 0:00 Intros + Wine/Napa talk

5:20 Herz's background + KBO talk

8:00 Herz's Initial Exp/Impression with DL

9:40 Past Biz DL deals with KBO + Herz's Time W/ Dodgers

13:55 ChatGPT answers

15:25 Hitting Dept Evolution over last year

21:00 Driveline's MLB Product on Hitting Side

24:25 Hi-Speed Machines More Common Now?

30:15 Cara Tells Boddy's fave Winter Meetings Stories/Memes

33:55 Driveline's Advantage Plan Offering + Lars Nootbaar Success Story

39:16 Recovery/Health Based Approach to Coaching MLB Hitters

42:45 History and Success of Smash Factor Balls

52:45 Herz's Impression of Seattle

Twitterz:

Alex Caravan: https://twitter.com/Alex_Caravan

Tanner Stokey: https://twitter.com/Tstokey

Andrew Aydt: https://twitter.com/AndrewAydt

Josh Herzenberg: https://twitter.com/joshherzenberg

With a couple guests/host replacements: Armando Benavides, Max Dutto and Juan Rodriguez!

Use promo code: good2learn25 for $25 off on Driveline PLUS! https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/pro... 

Caravan and Juan got invited by Armando on a Latin Baseball podcast a couple months ago so we had to return the favor when Armando was in town! (Said podcast link is here with the Driveline section timestamped -- https://youtu.be/mEEibo2hVag?t=1829)

This episode we talked big picture approach to bringing modern player development research to international markets and delved into Armando's real, raw experiences growing up playing baseball in Cuba; Juan's efforts to spread Driveline ESPAÑOL (https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/es-blog/), and Dutto's view on pushing education in expanding markets! A lot to chew on, scope the timestamps.

Timestamps 

0:00 Intros 

1:45 SwingCompleto Podcast & Reaction 

6:50 Juan Exp w/ Latin Baseball Community 

9:15 Introducing New Athletes to Driveline 

12:20 What Color Plyo Did Armando Throw? 

14:00 Player Devl When Growing Up W/o Tech or Coaching 

16:00 HP/S&C in Latin America 

22:40 Biggest Current Blockers in Latin American Player Dev'l 

30:05 Blockers Consulting In International Landscapes 

32:45 Best Way To Reach International Markets (Right Now) 

38:00 Rachel Balkovec Running S&C In DR  

40:50 MLB Teams Optimizing International Scouting 

48:55 Armando's Early Seattle Impression!!  

Link to the hosts' Twitters: 

Alex Caravan: https://twitter.com/Alex_Caravan 

Anthony Brady: https://twitter.com/BaseballFreak_9 

Kyle Lindley: https://twitter.com/kylelindley_ 

Max Dutto: https://twitter.com/MaxDutto_

Juan Rodriguez: https://twitter.com/jcrod22

Armando Benavides: https://twitter.com/ElMoroSince99

Episode 88 of the Driveline R&D Podcast with Anthony Brady, Alex Caravan, and Kyle Lindley!  

With a couple guests: Meet the Interns Summer 2022 Interns!! 

Use promo code: good2learn25 for $25 off on Driveline PLUS! https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/pro... 

Got a bunch of the Driveline R&D Summer Interns --  Ethan Siegel, Alfredo Suarez and Jean An from Data Science + Baylor Fish from Sports Science. Hit a curveball q for each intern...scope the timestamps below!

Timestamps 

0:00 Intros 

1:38 Ethan Siegel 

2:30 Pitching for MIT 

4:40 Gamifying Command + IZ Data 

10:40 Pulse In-Season 

12:45 Seattle Studs Championship W 

15:10 Brady's Trick to Avoid Walking 

18:35 Siegel's Pool Rankings 

20:30 Baylor Fish + ECU Super Regional Talk 

22:25 Baylor's Fave State To Live In 

23:50 ECU Lab vs Driveline Lab 

30:10 Baylor Hearing of Driveline 

31:30 Alfredo Suarez 

33:07 NCAA Transfer Portal 

38:10 Alfredo's Experience Working w/ Penn State 

40:30 Job App for Penn State Analytics 

41:10 College Analysts' Community 

42:20 Alfredo's Surprise from being at Driveline 

46:20 Jean An 

48:35 SABR Diamond Dollars 

56:05 Jean Commentating CPBL Games 

58:20 Discourse of Modern Analytics in Sports  

Link to the hosts' Twitters: 

Alex Caravan: https://twitter.com/Alex_Caravan 

Anthony Brady: https://twitter.com/BaseballFreak_9 

Kyle Lindley: https://twitter.com/kylelindley_ 

Ethan Siegel: https://twitter.com/ethansiegel22 

Baylor Fish: https://twitter.com/BayFish03 

Alfredo Suarez: https://twitter.com/aesuare 

Jean An: https://twitter.com/anchengyoung42

Episode 87 of the Driveline R&D Podcast with Anthony Brady, Alex Caravan, and Kyle Lindley!  

With guests: Vicram Kotecha!  Use promo code: good2learn25 for $25 off on Driveline PLUS! https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/product/plus-subscription/ 

Timestamps 

0:00 Intros 

1:04 Vic's background and UK v US 

7:00 How Vic found Driveline 

11:00 Vic shoots his shot for the Islanders 

14:50 Vic's experience with advanced stats 

17:30 Differences working in sports start-up vs large finance companies 

21:00 Software Engineering practices 

23:00 Vic sdding Driveline slang to lexicon 

27:20 Hockey (v  baseball) stats/tech advancements 

35:50 S/o Colorado Avs 2022 Champs!!! 

42:55 Vic in Seattle 

45:15 Value of bringing in outside POV to Driveline

Link to the hosts' Twitters:
Alex Caravan: https://twitter.com/Alex_Caravan
Anthony Brady: https://twitter.com/BaseballFreak_9
Kyle Lindley: https://twitter.com/kylelindley_

(twitter-less) Vicram Kotecha: https://www.linkedin.com/in/vicramkotecha/

Episode 86 of the Driveline R&D Podcast with Anthony Brady, Alex Caravan, and Kyle Lindley!

With guests: Kyle Boddy and Marek Ramilo!  Use promo code: good2learn25 for $25 off on Driveline PLUS! https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/product/plus-subscription/

Banger episode as Caravan, Boddy and Marek riff about the current state of sabermetrics in baseball, where certain teams are gaining edges and how to tell from a 3rd party point of view and broad thoughts on the future of the player development industry as a whole. Boddy also namedrops dozens of people, Caravan tells 1 or 2 unsolicited stories and Marek brings that quant trading background to give us some validity ;) - enjoy!

Timestamps: 0:00 Intros 

1:50 Marek background 

5:30 Current State of Sabermetrics in Baseball 

8:05 Next Steps in Sabermetrics 

10:30 Misinformation in Current Sabermetrics? 

17:25 Catcher Value 

19:20 Organization Value by MiLB success? 

25:50 CopyCat SSW value & Stuff+ Distributions 

30:15 Baseline Models & DL Growth Mentality 

34:50 Position Players 2 Pitchers + Undrafted FA's 

44:05 Value of Utility Players 

46:35 Walking Trea on 1-2 Count 

48:15 How Old School Baseball Still Is 

56:00 PULSE & Workload Mgmt in The Bigs 

1:05:03 Moneyball Ubiquity 

1:09:05 Casino Night 

1:11:30 Boddy's Perspective on DL Automation 

1:16:45 Marek's DL First Impression 

1:18:05 MLB Future Rule Adjustments

Link to the hosts' Twitters:
Alex Caravan: https://twitter.com/Alex_Caravan
Anthony Brady: https://twitter.com/BaseballFreak_9
Kyle Lindley: https://twitter.com/kylelindley_
Kyle Boddy: https://twitter.com/drivelinebases
Marek Ramilo: https://twitter.com/marekramilo

Episode 85 of the Driveline R&D Podcast with Anthony Brady, Alex Caravan, and Kyle Lindley!

With guests: Alex Harter and Max Engelbrekt!  Use promo code: good2learn25 for $25 off on Driveline PLUS! https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/product/plus-subscription/

Today Middlebury pitching coach Alex Harter joined us as a guest as well as Max Engelbrekt as a fill-in co-host for the pod! Anthony and Alex had some travel conflicts that we couldn't end up working around, but we are back with a banger. Alex talks about how he got into Driveline, some things he learned throughout his time here, how he translated those things to his work coaching at Middlebury, and how they put together a historical season out there in Vermont. Harter is an awesome guy and has some really good insight into how he was able to workaround quite the set of constraints going into a season with very little lead time. Max is just a homie and former podcast guest AND a college baseball fanatic who we were fired up to have join us this episode. Enjoy!

Timestamps
0:00 Intros

Link to the hosts' Twitters:
Alex Caravan: https://twitter.com/Alex_Caravan
Anthony Brady: https://twitter.com/BaseballFreak_9
Kyle Lindley: https://twitter.com/kylelindley_
Alex Harter: https://twitter.com/aharter15
Max Engelbrekt: https://twitter.com/maxengelbrekt

Episode 84 of the Driveline R&D Podcast with Anthony Brady, Alex Caravan, and Kyle Lindley!  

With guests: Andrew Aydt and Tanner Stokey!  Use promo code: good2learn25 for $25 off on Driveline PLUS!
https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/product/plus-subscription/  

Director of Hitting Tanner Stokey and Hitting Coordinator Andrew Aydt joined us on the podcast to talk hitting. We spent a lot of time on this episode talking about the growth of Driveline training that now includes advanced in-season support, and we also talked about how to improve hitting training environments, how training changes based on time of year, and how we approach training bat to ball skills and bat path. Enjoy!  

Timestamps
0:00 Intros
6:40 Aydt's road to Driveline
13:43 Stokey's road to Driveline
24:20 What is Driveline?
27:56 In-season training  
30:36 "Driveline guys" back then
31:15 Progression of Driveline hitting since 2017
32:25 Using the Big 3 to individualize training
40:00 Biggest unlock for Driveline hitting
45:40 Data making you better at not needing data
50:39 Coaching characteristics that we hire for
55:31 Where Ecological Dynamics could go wrong in hitting
58:12 The value of year-round training (Advantage Plan)
1:00:27 Mastering the correct training environment
1:02:18 Chasing bat path instead over attack angle
1:06:12 Smash Factor Balls & Training bat to ball skills  

Link to the hosts' Twitters:
Alex Caravan: https://twitter.com/Alex_Caravan
Anthony Brady: https://twitter.com/BaseballFreak_9
Kyle Lindley: https://twitter.com/kylelindley_
Tanner Stokey: https://twitter.com/Tstokey
Andrew Aydt: https://twitter.com/AndrewAydt

Episode 83 of the Driveline R&D Podcast with Anthony Brady, Alex Caravan, and Kyle Lindley!  

With guests: Brice Crider and Juan Rodriguez!  Use promo code: good2learn25 for $25 off on Driveline PLUS! https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/pro...  

High performance trainer Brice Crider and throwing trainer Juan Rodriguez came on the pod today and chatted all things integrated baseball development! We talked about the keys to balancing strength and conditioning needs with the athlete's needs on the throwing/hitting/skills side of things, what we use to determine where the focus is for each athlete coming in, what it means to be a high performance trainer as opposed to just a strength and conditioning coach, etc. Electric show today, enjoy!  

Timestamps 

0:00 Intros 

6:26 Brice and Juan's first introductions to Driveline 

8:52 Juan's hitting lessons pre-Driveline 

10:52 Throwing trainers Brady and Lindley 

11:45 Brady's arm slot switch 

17:20 Training economy between S&C and Throwing 

18:38 Focusing on what will have the highest ROI 

19:10 High Performance training model 

23:04 The difference between a strength trainer and a high performance trainer 

25:57 Bench press for pitch design 

32:51 What makes a great strength coach 

36:18 Considerations for the focus of an athlete's program 

42:50 The importance of knowing an athlete's throwing history 

45:35 Training duration considerations 

48:10 Things that would've been better, looking back 

52:23 Data and education tools for developing coaches 

1:00:53 Learning to think critically vs. memorizing and re-distributing info 

1:05:13 The value of "I Don't Know" 

1:07:12 It depends 

1:11:05 summer training environment

Link to the hosts'/guests' Twitters:

Alex Caravan: https://twitter.com/Alex_Caravan

Anthony Brady: https://twitter.com/BaseballFreak_9

Kyle Lindley: https://twitter.com/kylelindley_

Brice Crider: https://twitter.com/BriceCrider

Juan Rodriguez: https://twitter.com/jcrod22

Episode 82 of the Driveline R&D Podcast with Anthony Brady, Alex Caravan, and Kyle Lindley!  

With guest: Alyson Mitchell!  

Use promo code: good2learn25 for $25 off on Driveline PLUS! https://www.drivelinebaseball.com/pro...  

We got InfieldFlyGrl aka the Commissioner of the Aggressively Online Baseball League on this one soooo the boys sit back and learn about the Rakuten Monkeys, CPBL League complexities, supernerd'ing out on early 2000s Cubs, and the top agressively online independent baseball teams on Twitter!  

Timestamps 

0:00 Intros 

3:47 Alyson's CPBL fandom 

6:47 3:30 AM Game Watching 

7:25 CPBL Details 

11:25 No trading in CPBL?? 

15:44 Cubs Fandom Stories 

20:43 Cara Dodgers Fanhood Origin Story 

22:07 Thailand Monkeys/Failed Shanghai Trip Tangent Stories 

26:11 Alyson's Life Goal 

26:45 NPB Talk + Brady/Lindley's Japan Trip 

30:37 Origin of InfieldFlyGrl 

34:24 Is BaseballFreak A Good Handle? 

35:40 Change in Fandom While Working in Baseball? 

41:29 Baseball Twitter Shoutouts/Aggressively Online Rankings 

45:08 Brady Laying The League Smackdown + Seattle Studs Crack Aggressively Online Rankings 

51:06 2008 & 2016 Cubs Nostalgia 

53:01 CR Stories From the Desk 

57:18 Driveline Softball Intramural League?? 

59:15 Driveline Advantage Plan  

Link to the hosts'/guest's Twitters: 

Alex Caravan: https://twitter.com/Alex_Caravan

Anthony Brady: https://twitter.com/BaseballFreak_9

Kyle Lindley: https://twitter.com/kylelindley_

Alyson Mitchell: https://twitter.com/infieldflygrl