This new tech combines Trackman’s radar tracking with a projected screen behind home plate. Before each pitch, you mark your target. After you throw, you see exactly how far you missed and that locations’s run value, all in real-time.

What if we’ve all been wrong about baseball command this whole time? We may now have the answer…🧵

You’ve probably seen some unique training methods for improving command over the years. Throwing with your eyes closed? Having an optimal "balance point"? Baseball's tried it all. But no one could really prove if ANY of these methods actually worked.

Walk rates and strike percentages have historically been used to measure if a pitcher has good command because it’s generally true that pitches want to avoid walking batters (especially at the lower levels). But these traditional statistics don’t tell us the full story.

Take Blake Snell’s 2023 season for example. He had one of MLB's worst walk rates. But he also won the Cy Young Award. Does he have bad command? Or is his strategy to walk someone before allowing damage over the middle? Traditional command metrics completely miss this.

The problem with measuring command? We've been measuring outcomes not intent. A pitcher might get a swing & miss on a pitch that completely missed its target, but it’s still considered a positive result in terms of statistics like Walk Rate and Strike Percentage and thus Command

Enter @IE_MLB , they watch thousands of MLB games each year and track where pitchers are trying to throw the ball. Things like the catcher’s setup, situation and pitcher’s tendencies all factor into to deciphering the intended location. Their findings are fascinating...

The average MLB pitcher misses their target by 12.5 in. Yes, you read that right. TWELVE AND A HALF INCHES. A dotted pitch? Within 6in of the target. A miss more than 18in? Uncompetitive. But tracking with video has its limits. That's where the Intended Zone Tracker comes in…

It's not just about measuring misses. We can finally test if those old-school training methods actually work. By using the Intended Zones Tracker within one of Driveline’s motion capture labs we can start to recognize patterns between a pitcher’s mechanics and their command.

The tech will also eventually allow us to simulate games against MLB lineups in gym by overlaying a hitter’s heat map on to the screen. Miss your spot against Aaron Judge? Now you know by exactly how much and what the result might be, gamifying the training environment 🎮

We're entering an era where the art of command is meeting modern science. Each pitch is now a data point, each miss a lesson. Watch our latest Youtube video on command and The intended Zones Tracker here:

Any data on whether command suffers when at some point in the delivery, the image of the glove disappears in order To simulate a catcher’s pre-pitch glove load?