ABCA Webinar: "Are You Evaluating Players and Recruits Based Off Inaccurate Data"

December 8th, 2021

ABCA Digital Webinar

FEATURED PRESENTERS
CHRIS STEWART Co-Founder, Pocket Radar, Inc.
TODD BLYLEVEN Former Major League Baseball Scouting Supervisor

About the Webinar

Instantaneous feedback and data analysis is fast becoming an essential part of baseball coaching and athlete development. Capturing and analyzing a player’s throwing, pitching and hitting exit velocity are very valuable performance metrics to help with development and skill improvement. For this feedback to be useful, it is critical that the measurements be captured accurately. Even the best technology still needs to be set up and operated properly to get good readings. To evaluate slight changes in mechanics to see if they have an impact on speed, it is critical for the accuracy of the measurements to be better than the changes in the speed. If you are recruiting a prospect the difference of a few MPH can make all the difference.

In this webinar, you’ll learn the fundamentals needed to assure you are getting the most accurate readings from any radar gun. A little bit about the theory behind how they operate, and how to make sure you are getting reliable assessment of the performance of your athletes or potential recruits. While there is a 40-hour course developed for police officers to be able to understand how to use radar guns properly, we will be covering enough of the basics in this short webinar to make you successful using them in baseball.

Radar guns have been around for a long time, but they are not always well understood. This webinar will share real stories of experiences with coaches, scouts and recruiters. There are several important factors to consider in making sure you can get good data when using any radar. Here are a few key items we will focus on and hopefully a useful way to remember them:

• Distances
• Aiming
• Tilt
• Angles

Once you understand these key fundamentals, you can be sure you are getting reliable data on your athletes.

About the Presenters
Chris Stewart is a Co-Founder of Pocket Radar Inc. and an expert in Radar technology. He is an entrepreneur, engineer and inventor. Chris holds 6 key patents in Radar and Calibration Technology. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Chris spent 25 years in the high-tech industry in several engineering and business management roles. As an engineer he helped design the test system that is used to calibrate every Radar in the US NAVY. Chris is also a member of the committee that works with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) to set the specifications for all Radar guns used for law enforcement in the US. In his first job out of high school he repaired radar guns for the local police department. On the personal side, Chris grew up on a small farm in southern Ohio, where he learned first-hand the value of hard work and perseverance. Chris is a volunteer professor in the Electrical Engineering department at Sonoma State University. He also serves as the lead Entrepreneur-in-Residence for the SSU school of business and economics.

Todd Blyleven is a former professional baseball athlete, Major League Baseball Scouting Supervisor, professional coach and trainer, and current sports industry expert with a background that spans over 40 years in professional and amateur sports. Over the past 10 years, Todd has worked in the corporate section of sports helping sports product, event, and technology brands grow their business. Todd grew up on an MLB field traveling with his dad, Bert Blyleven, 23 year MLB Pitcher and Hall of Fame member. Todd was a High School and College All-American athlete, and owned and operated a baseball training facility along with owning and managing several amateur baseball travel teams helping place hundreds of athletes into college baseball programs over his 25 year coaching span. As a MLB Scout, Todd signed over 25 athletes to professional contracts, most notably MLB Players Troy Tulowitzki, Kevin Jepsen, Ian Stewart and Stephen Andrade. Todd is the author of “The Art of Pitching” eBook, and the developer and owner of the world’s only Baseball Scouting and Evaluation app on iTunes which marries objective and subjective scouting helping coaches better evaluate recruits and current players. Todd currently works with Pocket Radar helping them with their marketing, business development and business strategy efforts along with owning a growing sports technology brand providing evaluation and solution based software to coaches, organizations and athletes helping them succeed. Todd has been awarded many sports and company awards for his work on the field and in the office along with many awards from local and national law enforcement agencies for his courageous acts in Las Vegas on October 1, 2017. Todd’s son, Dylan, is in his HS senior year and carving his own path in the baseball world as a switch hitting catcher/3B in Frisco, TX. Todd’s life quote, “Love Wins.”

You can learn more about Radar gun basics and how to set up to get the best readings at this link: https://www.PocketRadar.com/community/help-center