Driveline Baseball Research - Open Access, Open Source, For All.

Research & Development

Driveline Baseball’s history and success is rooted in Research and Development (R&D), and has been since the company was founded in 2007 by Kyle Boddy. Our mission is to develop the future of baseball training by finding industry-leading insights and developing pro-caliber tools for players and coaches at all levels of the game.

The R&D Department is tightly integrated with the skill-departments at Driveline, working closely with pitching, hitting, and high performance coaches to solve baseball.

HISTORY

In January 2008, then-intern Matthew Wagshol and Kyle Boddy built a prototype motion capture control object in the aisles of Home Depot in Shoreline, WA. This would serve as the platform and foundation of the first markerless baseball biomechanics motion capture laboratory in the world built from consumer high-speed cameras and a do-it-yourself attitude.

Since then we’ve continued to enhance our training modalities by building on past research, piloting our own research, and continuing to push the boundaries of what’s possible in developing baseball players.

Today the R&D team employs more than 20 analysts, engineers, researchers, and scientists who all share the same drive and passion that Kyle imbued in the company since its inception.

Check out the lab

Check out the team

OUR RESEARCH

PHILOSOPHY

We are committed to publishing open source research back to the baseball community where it belongs. In almost all cases – except when it would violate personal privacy – we release full datasets for independent validation and analysis. Researchers like Dr. Mike Sonne have used these datasets, and we advocate that any independent researcher, coach, parent, or player do the same!

It is our view that science is not truly science unless it can be replicated, and replication requires open access. All of our IRB approved and peer-reviewed research is completely open access, with all data published, and is protected under the gold-standard open access license – CC BY 4.0. That means that the paper itself, along with all of the collected and analyzed data are freely available online, with the freedom to share and adapt the data as you please.

We primarily submit peer-reviewed articles through PeerJ which is extremely strict with submission guidelines, requiring IRB approval for all human subject studies, as well as requiring that all data be published openly. We have also started to publish pre-prints to SportRxiv as way to increase visibility and encourage more active feedback on our works. Regardless of where we submit, we will always publicly publish in an Open Access journal.

We currently split our blog post-style research and submissions to journals. Case studies and investigations will continue to be published to our blog, with more rigorously designed research being published on PeerJ and/ or SportRxiv.

PUBLISHED ARTICLES IN PEER-REVIEWED JOURNALS

PUBLISHED:

Surface electromyographic analysis of differential effects in kettlebell carries for the serratus anterior muscles: Caravan A, Scheffey JO, Briend SJ, Boddy KJ. (2018) PeerJ 6:e5044 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.5044
Effect of a six-week weighted implement throwing program on pitching velocity, arm kinematics, arm stress, and arm laxity: Marsh J, Wagshol M, Boddy K, O’Connell M, Briend S, Lindley K, Caravan A (2018) PeerJ 6:e6003 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6003
Exploring wearable sensors as an alternative to marker-based motion capture in the pitching delivery: Boddy KJ, Marsh JA, Caravan A, Lindley KE, Scheffey JO, O’Connell ME (2019) PeerJ 7:e6365 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.6365

PRE-PRINT:

Surface electromyographic analysis of the serratus anterior during bench press variations: Kyle L. Rogers, Alex Caravan, John O. Scheffey, Kyle J. Boddy (2019) SportRxiv https://doi.org/10.31236/osf.io/cgfwh
Arm Stress Comparisons Between Common Baseball Pitch Types: Erin Bristow, Alex Caravan, Kyle J. Boddy, Michael E. O’Connell, Sam J. Briend (2019) OSF Preprints https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/jxu86
A Kinematic and Kinetic Comparison of Mound and Rocker Throws: Anthony C. Brady, Sam J. Briend, Aex Caravan, Michael E. O’Connell, Kyle Lindley, Griffin Gowdey, Kyle J. Boddy (2020) SportRxiv https://doi.org/10.31236/osf.io/j2tvg
Weighted Baseball Training Affects Arm Speed without Increasing Elbow and Shoulder Joint Kinetics: Michael E. O’Connell, Kyle E. Lindley, John O. Scheffey, Alex Caravan, Joseph A. Marsh, Anthony Brady (2021) SportRxiv https://doi.org/10.31236/osf.io/pzh8a

ONGOING RESEARCH:

A motion capture analysis on differences between single-leg strength dominant vs. double-leg strength dominant athletes (in writing phase)
Validation of Blast Baseball’s bat sensor metrics (in analysis phase)
Effects of mound position on kinematics and kinetics during a baseball pitch (in writing phase)
Validation of biofeedback from K-Motion’s K-Vest (in analysis phase)
Differences in kinematics, arm stress, and arm laxity controlled for the velocity variation in the spread of weighted ball running throws (in analysis phase)
Biomechanical comparison of weighted Plyo Ball ® throws (in analysis phase)
Comparison of kinematics and kinetics to spin rate data in a baseball throw (in writing phase)
Validation of Diamond Kinetics’ SwingTracker bat sensor metrics (in writing phase)
Finger and grip strength measurements and their relationship to spin rate of baseballs (in analysis phase)
The Effect of Throwing Intensity on Overhand Throwing Mechanics (in data collection phase)
Relationship between jumping performance and baseball-specific performance (in data collection phase)

OTHER RESOURCES

We have also performed a number of internal investigations which can be anything from pilot investigations and case studies, to full blown research projects. Check out the blog for more.

Additionally, check the Research Reviews page for articles that formed the foundation of our scientific curiosity.

Also, make sure check out the Driveline R&D Podcast to stay up to date on what’s going on within Driveline R&D and the baseball research world as a whole. Available for viewing/ listening on YouTube, Spotify, and Apple.