Talking Braves prospects and data-driven training with Driveline’s Bill Hezel

There has been a lot of talk lately about Driveline and other similar programs that use data to assist in player development. Bill Hezel, a pitching coordinator at Driveline, was kind enough to answer some questions. Hopefully this will help fill in any gaps as to what Driveline actually does among other things. I know for myself, I’ve been fascinated with Driveline for awhile so I definitely thank Bill and Driveline for answering every question I had for them. I highly recommend following Driveline and Bill on Twitter as well as Kyle Boddy.

Without further ado....

Q: What do you do and how did you end up working at Driveline?

A: I am currently one of the pitching coordinators at Driveline. My primary job is to improve athlete results. This essentially means working hands-on with pitchers in-gym and through our remote training platforms.

I came out to Seattle to work for the company last May. Before that, I was coaching college baseball at the junior college and DIII level in Pennsylvania where I am originally from. I had been utilizing a lot of the training implements and protocols we use here with my college players, saw some great results and did as best I could to document it. When Driveline reached out to me about an open position within the business I knew this would be an opportunity to learn more about pitching and player development than I ever could anywhere else. After flying out and going through the interview process my wife, and I made the move.

Q: What is the most rewarding aspect of your job or what do you like most about your job?

A: I think the most rewarding part is really just helping athletes. It is fun to see a guy come out, go all-in on his training and get better. Seeing him actually transfer that onto the field is awesome. It very rewarding to be a small part of that process by providing the athlete with programming, training methodologies and the tools that they need.

We don’t just get athletes that are elite, in fact, many times their previous training or coaching has failed them. They may be seeking a way to get healthy, perhaps one final shot to play or a way to get back into affiliate ball. They may be coming off a poor season or simply looking for the opportunity to play college baseball. We get all types of athletes. The most rewarding part is seeing them go to war with themselves each day, dedicating a large part of their life to the sport and then reaching their goal. We can help that process and it’s a pretty special experience when it pays off for them.

Q: Can you tell me more about the overall purpose of the Driveline program? Is it to add velocity to a pitcher? Add RPMs/movement for a pitcher? More lift for a hitter?

A: Driveline is a data-driven baseball player development company. We train both hitters and pitchers at the college and professional level primarily. We do work frequently with high school and youth athletes as well. All of the performance training we provide is informed by research and built around an assess, test and retest model. We offer a pretty wide array of products and services to not only train athletes, but aid coaches and support professional organizations.

With an athlete, in particular, their training is very individualized. If it is a pitcher who needs to add some velocity or needs to design a new pitch to add to his repertoire, we can certainly augment and expedite this process. If it is a hitter who may need to increase bat speed or improve something like his approach angle, we can build out a program for that as well.

As far as adding RPMs to a pitch for a guy, it’s not really something anyone has figured out quite yet. We have certainly tried and we know how to kill some spin on pitches much like you would with a sinker or splitter, which is fairly common knowledge. In terms of adding spin, however, it isn’t something that has been figured out yet outside of using a foreign substance. It may never be.

Q: What are common misconceptions about the Driveline program?

A: I think the main misconception is just the idea that Driveline is simply a place you come train at if you need to throw harder. We certainly get athletes where that is a need and we have had a lot of success in helping them but what we do here is much more comprehensive.

Our approach to training athletes is pretty holistic but everything is supported and backed by data and sports science. The methods and protocols we implement have all been tested and we continue to do that on a daily basis.

We have over 30 employees, I believe, at this point. We have a R&D team that is larger than some MLB teams. We have a high performance team to support the strength and conditioning side of things. We have an on-site physical therapist who works at the facility full-time. We also have a quantitative analyst and a biomechanist on staff. The facility itself is equipped with a biomechanics lab and the leading baseball tech available. We can address pretty much anything an athlete would need.

Q: What is something that may surprise someone to learn about Driveline?

A: To tie into the previous question, it may surprise people that we do much more than just train baseball athletes at our facility. As I mentioned, we have a full R&D team that is not only supporting all of our training initiatives but producing published works and creating baseball training products. We have provided various products and services to major league teams and colleges at pretty much every level.

We recently launched DrivelinePlus a few months ago which is a membership site that provides video content to players and coaches to educate them on a variety of player development topics.

We have provided teams and organizations with mobile assessments on both the hitting and pitching side of things as we have a mobile version of our lab. We will be doing this again soon.

Improving athlete results is still the core of what we do, it’s just not all we do.

Q: For pitchers, what is a typical day like as part of the program? Same question for hitters.

A: For both hitters and pitchers, the first few days at our facility would be the same in that they go through a comprehensive assessment. That will help build out their training program for the coming weeks.

This includes biomechanical analysis with high speed video and motion capture in our lab, strength testing using VBT devices, a complete mobility assessment by our high performance staff as well as an evaluation by our physical therapist.

We also get baseline performance metrics. For pitchers, that is getting baseline velocity numbers and pitch characteristics on each pitch from Rapsodo or Trackman.

For hitters, it is using tech like HitTrax, K-Vest and Blast Motion to gather some batted ball data and swing characteristics. Members of our hitting team are TPI Certified so that is also part of the hitting assessment.

After the skill, strength and mobility assessment pieces are complete the athlete sits down with a throwing or hitter trainer and a member of our high performance team to go over everything. This is really the most important and valuable piece of their initial assessment. We do a really good job connecting the dots for the athlete as to why they maybe cannot move optimally or can’t execute a movement proficiently. We discuss how that movement deficiency may be tied to a strength or mobility issue they have. We also fill in the cracks with the biomechanical data we get from our lab. We help interpret all the skill related data we have gathered as well, so things like exit velocity, launch angle, approach angle, spin rate, spin axis, horizontal and vertical break, etc. We communicate all this to the athlete in a way that is digestible and work with them to build out a plan for the following weeks or months to improve.

After that the real work starts and the athlete is in the facility executing on that plan each day with our staff.

Q: Which Braves players/prospects have used Driveline (past and current)?

A: Obviously, Kyle Muller is here right now and has trained here previously. We have also had Brandon McCarthy, Mike Minor, and Ryan Buchter. Eric O’Flaherty is here now training along with David Carpenter. Carpenter actually just threw in our pro day a few weeks ago and was sensational. He was throwing 94-96 mph bowling balls.

Q: Can you tell us about any specific results and progression that came from their experience?

A: For Kyle, he did not perform as well as he probably would have liked in 2017 but he certainly came back with a fantastic 2018. It was really just about understanding some of the feedback from his biomechanics report and how to make some small changes while remaining athletic. Rather than him worrying about getting perfect positions to throw he worked on making minor changes while giving himself the freedom for that athleticism to still really take over. He obviously has no problem putting in the effort as his work ethic is elite.

Q: Which player(s) ended up having some sort of career best season after going through the Driveline program?

A: I think the two most widely recognized or most talked about examples over the last year would be Trevor Bauer and Adam Ottavino. Both had tremendous seasons.

Trevor has trained at the facility for a handful of years and it is all pretty well documented at this point. He has worked on a variety of things over that time period - velocity, command and pitch design.

Ottavino worked a lot on the pitch design side of things to improve and even add to his arsenal. Not everyone we train needs or goes through specific velocity work. Ottavino primarily used high speed Edgertronic cameras, that we use in-house and many MLB teams use now, along with pitch tracking technology like Rapsodo to enhance his pitches. In pitch design work we are looking to improve a pitcher’s current pitches and sometimes add an additional offering that may fit into his arsenal. One that may pair well with the rest of his stuff.

On top of that, this past year, Oregon State won another National Championship. They have utilized our products and training protocols for quite a while now along with a ton of other colleges across all levels including Vanderbilt, Coastal Carolina, and UNC.

Q: Do you reach out to individual players, or do players come to you organically/by word of mouth?

A: It is primarily organic and word of mouth. If we can show that we are the absolute best in the world at training baseball athletes, the rest will kind of take care of itself. It is also important that the type of athlete who comes to the facility to train is the type of athlete we want. We want athletes that have an open-mind, are willing to work extremely hard and have a growth mindset. The fact that athletes have to come out to Seattle and that it’s the only location in the country means the athletes that do make the trip are serious about their development. We take the gym culture and atmosphere athletes get to work in very serious.