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In baseball's ongoing technological evolution, we're witnessing something fascinating: hitting is catching up.

Or at least that’s the premise of Eno Sarris, Brittany Ghiroli and Jen McCaffrey’s April 17th piece in the Athletic.

Whether it be speed training, bat path scouting, or torpedo bats, hitting is having its own revolution.

So what is really going on here? Are we seeing a shift in power? Or, is this just another example of the impact technology and curiosity has had on baseball over the last twenty years?

I’d argue it’s the latter.

And I’d make that argument because the same relentless competitiveness the world see from those on the field exists in the front office…where executives, analysts, and scientists spend their days looking for any and every edge.

When they find one, they exploit it. And they look for what’s next.

Innovation Never Sleeps

All teams eventually get to the same answer. In baseball, everyone understands the importance of velocity and bat speed. In basketball, the three pointer is king league wide.

However, while everyone eventually gets there, the winners consistency arrive first.

This is exactly what Sarris, Ghiroli and McCaffrey explain:

One pitcher throws a unique changeup in August 2024, and by the next spring training, nearly two dozen pitchers are using the grip and talking about how much they love their new pitch. Pitchers, coaches, and executives are all on the same page. The tech and data are so finely tuned that they’ll all talk about the things they are doing — the presumption is that any edge they have is fleeting, and will get quickly around the league…We’re talking about weeks for a concept to spread now, not months or years.

And, since everyone accepts this case:

“Advantages are short-lived,” said Orioles’ assistant general manager Sig Mejdal. “It’s very hard to do something in the field publicly in an industry that’s so well analyzed and observed, and not have it get out.”

teams have two options:

• Never innovate, or

• Never stop innovating.

Enhancing Decision-Making, Not Replacing It

If we agree constant innovation is the better route, the follow up question is “How do we innovate?”- and more specifically, how do we do so better than the competition. Here, teams should focus on three things: the right culture, the right information, and the right sandbox.

• The Right Culture. The non-quantifiable things that matter on the field also matter to the “nerds” in the front office.
  
  Here is Jason Ochart, Director of Hitting Development with the Boston Red Sox:
  
  “I learned that the hard way in previous situations where we did like 20 percent of everything, and no one got better,” Ochart said. “When you try to meet in the middle, it’s like, ‘Oh, I’m gonna turn the HitTrax on only for these reps. And we’re gonna do bat speed training for this small group of players in the DR and the complex.’ And then when I met the Red Sox group, everyone was like, ‘Go build it and do exactly what it is you want, and you’re going to have (our) full support.'”
  
  Ochart may have had the skills to succeed elsewhere, but the unlock occurred when his curiosity was married with an organization that empowered him.
  

• The Right Information. Data is not the answer…data helps you find the answer.

  Listen to Ochart describe what life is like for a Director of Hitting in MLB today:
  

  “The machines, the amount of information we can collect on players from an evaluative standpoint, in training, the way we can track progress and give feedback to players, it’s what I dreamed about 10 years ago when I started,” said Ochart. “It’s an amazing environment for players to come in and get better at scale. The way I think about hitting and skill development in general hasn’t changed, but the tools have changed.”
  
  The massive improvement in tools and data doesn’t replace what people like Ochart do. Rather, it gives them leverage. It allows their problem solving skills to run wild, with more objective answers as they test their subjective hypotheses.
  

• The Right Sandbox. Once innovators have 1) buy in from the top and 2) the necessary information for exploration, the last step is the right sandbox to play in.
  
  Again quoting from the Athletic:
  
  It was March, and it was madness — but this was the Red Sox version. More than 40 hitters competed against each other, trying to outdo each other in drills, and checking the results every day on a posted leaderboard.
  

  “We pretty much played every day,” said Campbell, a rookie second baseman, this spring. “Whether it was who can hit the ball harder or who can hit more home runs, just different challenges. And I did manage to get to the final four.”

  
  “I made it to the finals,” said Marcelo Mayer, Boston’s top infield prospect. “It was fun, and it made going to the cage exciting. One of the rounds was just who could score more runs off the Trajekt, the angle machine, or going back side, things like that.”
  
  When people talk about innovation, they generally refer to a ground breaking idea.
  

  However, most innovation starts with process. Leaders need to build the right processes so coaches and analysts can explore new ideas. Then, coaches and analysts need to ensure the right path that allows those ideas to get to the field.

Looking Forward

The organizations consistently at the forefront of sports technology don't just have better tools - they have cultures that embrace innovation as a core value.

That is because technology alone doesn't create a sustainable competitive advantage - it's how organizations integrate that technology into their development processes, how they communicate its value to players and coaches, and how they continuously improve their methodologies that matters.

As we move forward in this age of rapid technological evolution, the most successful sports organizations will be those that view technology not as a replacement for traditional approaches, but as a complement. They'll use data to enhance coaching wisdom, machine learning to augment human intuition, and biomechanics to provide clearer pathways to performance excellence.

The future belongs to those who can jump between technology and tradition, embracing both while being enslaved to neither.

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