The IPod's A Hit In Baseball
Comments:
The iPod may be on its way to becoming one of the most popular training aids in baseball. Last season Colorado Rockies' video coaching coordinator Brian Jones loaded all of player Todd Helton's at-bat hits onto his iPod, giving Helton instant access to footage of 1,509 of his hits, dating all the way back to 1998.
Carrying around a device that fits in the palm of his hand, Helton had the ability to study his game just about anytime; whether he was in a restaurant, on a plane travelling between games, or even in the dugout during a game. Prior to this, Colorado Rockies players could only study footage of their performance while in the team's video room and there it took up to four shelves just to hold all the tapes for one player.
Soon word of Helton's new training strategy got out and by the end of the season 17 members of the team were using their iPods to study their game. Every week or so Jones and his fellow video coordinator Mike Hamilton would update the team's iPods, adding the latest hits and organizing them by date, hitter, pitcher and opponent.
Most notable in the stories of success is that of Jason Jennings, who claims that using the iPod turned his whole season around. At the start of a game against the Braves last season Jennings's average number of earned runs (ERA) was 6.60. After using the iPod to study some of the pitches that the Braves were hitting against him, Jennings decided to try a different tactic in that night's game. Although the team lost 2-0, Jennings bumped his ERA up to a 3.31, which by Rockies standards equated to a 1.31.
Of course the iPod hasn't become the perfect training device, yet. Many players are wishing that the device had a larger screen so that they could observe hits in more detail and coaches say that the iPod can be just as much of a distraction as an aid. It's too easy for players to switch tracks from training to watching episodes of their favourite television show. Finally, as Mitch Ratcliffe points out on his Tech and Media Blog at zdnet.com, the iPod would be a better training device if it was equipped with a search engine. This would allow players to search for at-bats against a specific pitcher or compare hits and strike-outs against a particular team, opening up a whole world of metadata that could be explored.
Despite these flaws the iPod is still gaining steam in the baseball industry. This season Jennings is being transferred to the Houston Astros and many are betting that he will be encouraging his new teammates to try his latest training technique. Other teams including the Phillies, Marlins, Mariners, Indians, and Red Sox have also tried using their iPods in training or have made inquiries about how to do so. As well, Hamilton and Jones were honoured by their colleagues for their use of the iPod in training with the 2006 Award of Excellence following last year's baseball season.