How Pelotero is Rethinking Player Development with Chris Colabello & Bobby Tewksbary

Athletic Intelligence Episode 3 Transcript

How Pelotero is Rethinking Player Development with Chris Colabello & Bobby Tewksbary

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Meet Chris Colabello and Bobby Tewksbary

[00:00] Chris Colabello: I think the purpose of tech and data is to help humans do things faster and more efficient, not to cloud their vision. 

[00:10] Narration: That's Chris Colabello a AAA MVP, who made his major league debut with the twins in 2013 and later suited up for the Toronto Blue Jays. 

[00:19] Bobby Tewksbary: Capturing the data is the easiest part. It's how do you translate it and how do you make it meaningful and actionable. That's the real challenge.

[00:26] Narration: And that's Bobby Tewksbury, who might just be one of the earliest adopters of tech in the game. He's a longtime hitting coach, known for his ability to break down a hitter's strengths, weaknesses, and how they can optimize consistent results. Together they're building Pelotero, a platform that takes the guesswork out of player development by turning data into action.

[00:49] Narration: In this episode, Chris and Bobby join Aman and Alex to talk about what actually helps players get better. They break down the rise of the swing revolution, the power of pairing instincts with data. And the moment that changed everything when Bobby threw at the MLB Home Run Derby.

[01:09] Narration: This is athletic intelligence from Game Changer, a show where we go deep inside the world of baseball and softball, uncovering the tech that's shaping the game. 

From Stat Rats to Strategic Coaches

[01:21] Alex Trezza: I've known Chris and Bobby for a long time. We played against each other, with each other, and now we're best friends. Somewhere along the way, we realized we were all wired the same way.

[01:30] Alex Trezza: We were total baseball rats. Obsessed with getting better, breaking things down and figuring out the game. But Chris and Bobby go back before the three of us became friends. 

[01:41] Bobby Tewksbary: Chris and I met at the 2004 N-E-C-B-L All-Star Game in Vermont, Montpelier, Vermont. We were both stat rats, so we were checking box scores every night and paying attention to who's who in the league.

[01:53] Bobby Tewksbary: Colabello was putting up numbers and we met at that All-Star game. Kinda the next time we crossed paths was the pre-draft workout for the Red Sox in 2005. We both ended up in Worcester playing for the tornadoes in the Can-Am League. Spent the off season together mostly, you know, getting in the cage, working kind of kindred spirits when it comes to the game, and we see the game through a similar lens.

[02:15] Bobby Tewksbary: We're work ethic guys. We care. We wanted to get better. And, um, Chris continued playing after I stopped. I played for parts of two years. Chris played for seven years at that level, and then we reconnected from a coaching standpoint. 

How Studying Box Scores Created Smarter Players

[02:28] Aman Loomba: Bobby, I, I, I heard you say something interesting at the very top. In college,

[02:32] Aman Loomba: you said you and Chris were both stat rats. What did that mean at that time and how did it manifest? How did you guys connect over that? 

[02:39] Bobby Tewksbary: I think all three of us, Alex, Chris, myself, we were good baseball players, but we weren't good enough that we had to pay attention. We had to notice the details. We had to compete mentally to have a chance physically.

[02:50] Bobby Tewksbary: So from a stat rat standpoint, I would check the N-E-C-B-L. Every night I would sit down and look at the box scores and be like, all right, who's hitting, who's not? And that's gonna prepare you for the next day. It's gonna give you awareness. Who's striking guys out? Who's walking guys? I would read the log, the game log of, you know, who's rolling over, where are they hitting the ball?

[03:07] Bobby Tewksbary: And when you have that information, you just build up this database in your head of what's happening. And all three of us approach the game that way. When we go to a game, it's not casual. We're on the hunt for information with our eyes and looking for things that matter. So stat rat wise? Yeah. I'm like, I wanna know who walks more than they strike out.

[03:23] Bobby Tewksbary: You know, I'm checking on base percentage. I wanna know who's got extra base hits, who's stealing bags. 

[03:27] Aman Loomba: Yeah. 

[03:27] Bobby Tewksbary: Like it helps you prepare. But those little details, a box score can tell you a lot about what happened without seeing the game. 

[03:33] Aman Loomba: So I'm kind of hearing you say stat rat at that time to you was about your sort of traditional baseball stats, the box score or stuff you'd see in the play-by-play, traditional play-by-play.

[03:42] Aman Loomba: And it was more about competitive scouting than it was about using your own stats to help develop your game. 

[03:48] Bobby Tewksbary: I think part of it's knowing where you stand, where you stack up. 

[03:52] Aman Loomba: To compare yourself. 

[03:53] Bobby Tewksbary: Yeah. If I'm trying to be good, I need to know how good other people are. 

Turning Traditional Stats into Development Tools

[03:55] Chris Colabello: I think it's both, right? Like it's definitely both.

[03:58] Chris Colabello: And at the time when, you know, you're diving into a browser trying to figure out how to get to the stat link, and I feel like when I was in college, I was playing in the Northeast 10 and our, our access to information was so limited. It was like, you know, minuscule tech on some link that you had to access that was,

[04:14] Chris Colabello: like a PDF that kept getting updated. Basically, I called us baseball nerds 'cause we were diving through all of it. Right? I would know who was leading the league in hitting every week. I would know who was leading the league in homers where I stood. And to Bobby's point where you stood in all of it, that was like the reference point for me of what it meant to be good.

[04:31] Chris Colabello: You needed to be able to perform on the field and yeah, that's kind of like the everything. Like how good are you playing? Right. I could see you train, I could see you practice, I could see you take bp, but I wanna know if you can get it done out on the field. 

[04:41] Alex Trezza: Yeah. And probably of the three of us. I was least of that in the sense of like, I only looked at like homers, doubles and like RBIs, right?

[04:52] Alex Trezza: Like Chris, I've never seen anyone know like, okay, I if I go 13 from the next 72, my batting average is gonna go down three and a half points, whatever. It was unbelievable. And if I thought like that, I would be paralyzed and wouldn't know what to do. But Chris knew like, I have to get four hits tonight to lead the league by Wednesday, or something like that.

[05:10] Alex Trezza: It was nuts to watch.

How Swing Research Helped Chris level up from indy ball to the MLB

[05:16] Narration: Bobby opened up a training facility in New Hampshire, a place built around one idea — give players everything he wished he had if he were starting over. Meanwhile, Chris was still grinding it out in independent ball determined to make it to the majors. 

[05:32] Chris Colabello: Bobby started his baseball academy in New Hampshire and, and started discovering stuff about the swing and was just persistent enough to keep telling me that he thought he found some stuff, and that stuff ended up being pretty monumental for my career.

[05:43] Chris Colabello: And the transition from good independent ball player to major league player. 

[05:48] Narration: At the time, Bobby was doing what most coaches do. Running lessons, spending hours analyzing video, coaching travel teams. Seven days a week filling every hour coaching players who needed his time. The better he got at helping them, the busier he became.

[06:04] Narration: It was a system built on hustle, not scale.

[06:07] Bobby Tewksbary: You're starting to creep into sleep and family time and it just becomes, it's non-scalable. That's ultimately the problem. I was just not sleeping, studying video all the time, 

[06:18] Chris Colabello: like true story, 

[06:19] Bobby Tewksbary: trying to respond to emails the best that I could, and I didn't do a good job of that.

[06:22] Bobby Tewksbary: It was completely overwhelming, to be honest at the time. 

[06:25] Narration: Bobby was deep in it. Testing every tool he could get his hands on — video delay setups, bat sensors, pressure mats, motion capture vests, anything that might unlock a better swing. And lucky for him, he had a willing test subject. Here's Chris. 

Using Tech to Break Down the Baseball Swing

[06:42] Chris Colabello: So one day I'm in the cage in 2014, this after my first year in the big leagues, and we have HitTrax on, we put a motion sensor, uh, vest on me.

[06:50] Chris Colabello: I put a floor pressure mat under my feet, had a bat sensor on the bat, and we had video delay on. I'm sitting there just impatient as could be. Took us 30 minutes to get ready to take swings, and finally he goes, you ready? And I go, I've been standing here 30 minutes. Of course I'm ready. And finally, like I take one swing and we turn around and look at the screen and,

[07:07] Chris Colabello: It might as well have been gibberish to me at the time, and I had no foresight or thought about how that data could be leveraged as he was going, wow, look at that. And I go, where does it say on that screen how to hit a two, two slider? I don't, I don't see that part. 

[07:18] Bobby Tewksbary: I'm thrilled because I have a major league player in my database now, and I'm just, I'm envisioning,

[07:24] Bobby Tewksbary: like if we collect data and understand what's meaningful in all of this, we can start to help players when I don't have to be there with my time.

The Start of the Swing Revolution

[07:35] Bobby Tewksbary: The whole swing revolution that's been happening publicly at the major league level for the last few years really started 15 years ago. It was on internet forums and it was people just searching for information about ultimately like a linear swing versus a rotational swing, and people were trying to pursue better and technology was exploding.

[07:55] Bobby Tewksbary: Video access was now in your pocket 'cause the iPhone came out and people were searching in a way that probably wasn't realistic before that. So that was when Chris and I started working together as coach player slash friends. That's when his independent career turned into a, an affiliated career, turned into a big leaguer, and the information that I was sharing with Chris started spreading through clubhouses and got to connect with a lot of major league players.

[08:24] Narration: In 2015, everything changed. Chris was with the Blue Jays and Bobby was also working with his teammate and one of their stars, Josh Donaldson. Just before the Allstar break, Donaldson called Bobby with a question. Will you throw to me in the home run Derby? That July, Bobby Tewksbury stepped onto one of baseball's biggest stages, throwing BP at the MLB Home Run Derby.

[08:50] Narration: Live on international television.

[08:57] Narration: The next morning his inbox exploded. 

[09:02] Bobby Tewksbary: I woke up with over 700 emails of people that wanted to work with me. 

[09:06] Narration:  Hey Bobby, can you look at my son's video attached? Do you offer private lessons? Can we book a session? My son needs help with Joe Riot, how? Drive to Ohio if you can help him.

[09:11] Bobby Tewksbary: It was the first time that I just couldn't work harder and get it accomplished, it broke my brain in terms of like, I need to find a scalable solution.

[09:22] Bobby Tewksbary: I was very tech forward, have a very logical kind of way of thinking. So I started with HiTrax, with Diamond Kinetics, with K-VEST, with literally any piece of tech that I could get my hands on. 

[09:35] Alex Trezza: You had all of that like. 

[09:25] Bobby Tewksbary: Yeah

[09:36] Alex Trezza: You had every single piece before everyone did in the old place. 

[09:37] Bobby Tewksbary: If I saw a piece of tech come out, I would reach out to the company immediately because I wanted to know how to apply it.

[09:43] Bobby Tewksbary: I was doing that before the Home Run Derby. When the Home Run Derby thing happened. It was like, okay, we really need to build a platform, a solution that's gonna be able to process this because I, I had no way of working with 700 people at once. There's so many things happening that are now capable of being captured.

Making Data Meaningful: The Core of Pelotero

[09:59] Bobby Tewksbary: And the crazy part is capturing the data is the easiest part. Like anybody can go out and just buy the stuff. It's how do you translate it and how do you make it meaningful and actionable? That's the real challenge, and that's ultimately what Pelotero was built to do, is bring in the data, translate it, and make it meaningful, make it actionable in the form of personalized training.

[10:19] Bobby Tewksbary: 'Cause ultimately, that's what coaching is. We need to understand what the problem is and build a plan to fix it. We call it a player intelligence platform. The word pelotero means ball player in Spanish. It's essentially your digital life as a player. It's what you do. It's who you are, it's what you've done in the past.

[10:33] Bobby Tewksbary: So the way we do things now, like the way you upload a video, we can now go and backtrack and look at what your swing was like three months ago, six months ago, and check your data and how you progress over time. We just launched a game tracking tool that helps understand and process things that aren't being captured by existing systems. Like, pitch recognition, like it's incredible.

[10:52] Bobby Tewksbary: We launched this game tracking tool, or we started building the prototype and asking our customers about it, and one of the major questions is, was it a fastball or a curve ball or a changeup? And the coach was like, our players, dunno what that is. I was like, well, that's a pretty big problem. If your players don't know what pitch to swing at, how are they timing it and how are they aiming?

[11:10] Bobby Tewksbary: The most fundamental element of hitting is see the ball. Like if you go Pete Rose style, see the ball, hit the ball, you gotta see the ball first. And that it's not just seeing it, it's seeing it and recognizing it. And then Ted Williams says, get a good ball to hit. It's like if you don't know where the ball is gonna end up based on the pitch type, then you can't get a good pitch to hit.

[11:28] Bobby Tewksbary: It's so fundamental, but people aren't even asking that question. And the big data that exists like you throw on a TrackMan, it TrackMan can track what happened. It can't track what's going on in the player's head. And everybody's looked at it as, oh, well you can't do it because it's not scalable. It's like, well, somebody has to ask the player what's going on to start the conversation.

[11:47] Bobby Tewksbary: This is what happens in the clubhouse. This is the conversation when you make an out, you go back to the dugout and the teammate goes, what's he got? What's it look like? And then you're talking about spin and tilt and release points, and that's where hitting happens. That's the conversation of hitting.

Turning Complex Data Into Easy-to-Follow Coaching for Young Athletes and Organizations

[12:00] Chris Colabello: And on top of that,

[12:01] Chris Colabello: like ultimately our, our goal really is to take those insights and to drive programming for athletes, right? Because. For me, the athlete that was in the cage, I didn't care what most of those numbers said. I just wanted to play good, right? I wanted to have good numbers and I wanted to have, feel like I was competitive against the best players in the world.

[12:20] Chris Colabello: So, again, I've got my logic friend over there who gets to comb through all that stuff, and I get to think about, okay, how do we apply this in its simplest form for the masses, right? For the kids that maybe don't want to dive into learning about X factor and separation and sequencing and things like that.

[12:37] Chris Colabello: It's like, okay man, hey, go do this stuff. Right? And certainly in terms of scalable solutions, like that's what we're trying to attack in this industry right now is amateur baseball specifically, where it's just really, really hard to get good instruction consistently, right? You can go seek it out on an individual level and pay hundreds of dollars to an instructor, but you're already paying thousands of dollars for travel ball programs, so we're just trying to facilitate that for those organizations.

[13:02] Chris Colabello: The value prop is really driven in two ways. One, to give the player information that they likely need to help them become their own best coach, but also a tool specifically for the coach to help work with more players. And the irony is when you help a player become his own best coach, he relies on his coach more for dialogue and discussion.

[13:21] Chris Colabello: So it's a tool built for both of those I would say.

[13:30] Narration: one of the biggest pain points for coaches is time breaking down video. Choosing the right drills and personalizing plans. It all takes hours and it's rarely scalable. Pelotero flips that. Players upload a swing, video, bat sensor data, or game results, and the system does the rest. 

[13:50] Bobby Tewksbary: The athlete's data chooses the drills for them.

[13:53] Bobby Tewksbary: The analysis that used to take me 30 minutes is now happening. It's been programmed into the system. The priority system will figure out kind of where you're at, what you need to focus on, and then the drills that are most appropriate will be given to you. Picking drills and giving them to the coaches instantly allows them to just focus on the time in the cage and building that relationship and providing feedback.

Why Relationships Are the Foundation of Great Coaching

[14:15] Chris Colabello: And just to hammer this point home, I think the most important thing that a coach can do is provide feedback and build a relationship with the player. Right. The relationship that you build with that player and support them in going through that, in that process of discovery is ultimately what you're really providing, right?

[14:33] Chris Colabello: Because when everything's said and done, the player has to get in the box by themselves. You never get to go hit for them. So we need that player to be equipped by the time they get to the field to be ready for that, and ripping that time constraint that is, is being created by all this other stuff away allows coaches to coach better.

[14:48] Chris Colabello: And it allows players to lean into what the coaches are saying, and ultimately I think that makes that cycle much more efficient. 

[14:54] Bobby Tewksbary: We always say it's a hitting's a lifestyle. You always have to be paying attention because anytime you get successful, the competition's gonna adjust. The pitcher's job is to find your weakness.

Checkers to Chess: Teaching Baseball as Strategy

[15:04] Bobby Tewksbary: If you're doing something well, they're not gonna just let you keep doing it. They're going to poke and prod and, and try to figure out how to get you out. They're trying to figure out what's a bad pitch for you. And as a hitter, you're trying to make as many pitches, good pitches to hit. I joke around that we're trying to introduce players that have been playing checkers to chess, like.

[15:24] Bobby Tewksbary: These pieces can move in different ways, and you have to understand the dynamics, and it does get complicated, but the analysis is always about making it simple and educating. 

Tools for Year-Round Player Development 

[15:33] Chris Colabello: And we always say too, player development is 12 months a year, right? You have training facilities who are trying to make money in non-seasonal months, like the non-traditional months.

[15:41] Chris Colabello: They're trying to maximize what they can get. Our tool also allows us to say, hey, look, during that time of the year when your building's not full, we have tools for you to help your players and get them to lean into the lifestyle that is we're trying to get better every day. You should be developing while you're playing.

[15:57] Chris Colabello: If you look at the major league season, you play 162 games in 184 days. You never practice, right? So you have a practice before the game, but that's not really your time to get better. You should be thinking about getting better as you're playing. And I think all three of us can attest this.

[16:14] Narration: When it comes to data and tech in baseball, the conversation still tends to split the room. Some coaches are all in using every tool available to measure, refine, and repeat. Others, stick with what's always worked. Instincts, feel, and lived experience. And now that tools like radar, guns, swing sensors, and video analysis are more accessible than ever,

[16:37] Narration: the tension's only grown. As SVP of Product at Game Changer. Aman sees that challenge firsthand. Building tools is one thing, getting people to use them is another.

[16:51] Aman Loomba: Do you find that there's like an attitude still that's skeptical of using the data and really sort of more trusting of instincts and feel and look?

[17:03] Bobby Tewksbary: The challenge is that both are important. So, right now there's a term of like a showcase player where these kids are training and they're improving their metrics so well, it's easy to capture metrics now.

[17:16] Bobby Tewksbary: So things like HitTrax and diamond kinetics and radar guns are so, I mean, you can get a Pocket Radar for, what four hundred bucks? That used to be thousands of dollars and it was rare. It's hyper accessible and the result of that is players are really getting good at metrics and the, the current tournament structure and what travel ball is, they're playing a ton of games without practicing.

[17:38] Bobby Tewksbary: I had a college coach tell me he's never seen so many kids that can throw hard, but can't pitch. He's never seen so many kids that can hit home runs and put on an impressive batting practice, but can't hit. So there's a big difference between having the physical tools and being able to apply them. 

[17:54] Aman Loomba: How much of the data your system needs or uses comes from in-game versus just taking swings of practice?

Pitch Recognition, Timing, and Decision-Making

[18:01] Bobby Tewksbary: The game tracking tool that we just launched is a big deal for that purpose because the, the questions around pitch recognition, the questions around timing and accuracy, these are the things that, as a coach, when I was at my facility back, if we're going back 10 years ago now, you asked me about my time constraints and what was, what was my life like?

[18:19] Bobby Tewksbary: The high school season would start. If kids were hitting good, they'd be like, gone. I wouldn't hear from him. Kid goes, oh, for four goes, oh, for eight. He goes a week without getting a hit, he shows up at my door going, man, I don't, I don't feel good. And then I would say, well, what's going on? And I would never get a good answer.

[18:35] Bobby Tewksbary: And it's so much about teaching these kids what to pay attention to. So, with our tool, with the game tracking tool, every pitch they have to answer the questions. Did I recognize the pitch? Was I on time? Did I recognize it? Did I make a good decision? And it's the process of working through in a bat and understanding the different strategies that pitchers use and learning the game.

[18:57] Bobby Tewksbary: Chris and I were just talking earlier, like our product is ultimately just trying to teach kids how to play the game. 

[19:02] Aman Loomba: Mm-hmm. 

[19:03] Bobby Tewksbary: And playing the game is a very, very mental exercise. It's gotten very physical first, mental second. Being able to play the game mentally first and being most prepared and being able to anticipate is really what separates at the highest levels,

[19:16] Bobby Tewksbary: like by and large, these are physical peers. You have to separate yourself with your anticipation, your thinking. That's where the real separator occurs. 

[19:23] Aman Loomba: Yep. That's gotta be your edge. 'Cause most of these guys look just like you and you know, weigh just the same as you. And you gotta have baseball IQ to, to really make yourself stand out.

[19:32] Bobby Tewksbary: Internally, we have this thing going about like, we gotta make boring, cool. 

[19:36] Aman Loomba: Mm-hmm. 

[19:36] Bobby Tewksbary: Like, it seems boring, but it's not until you get into the trenches. Chess is very boring unless you understand chess and you're like, oh, this is intense. 

[19:43] Aman Loomba:Mm-hmm. 

[19:43] Bobby Tewksbary: Because you understand it's a war. There's a multi-front war happening at all times on the field.

[19:49] Bobby Tewksbary: It's mental warfare at every moment. 

[19:52] Aman Loomba: I almost hear you saying we have access to all this new data and rich data sets that we didn't have before in technology, but at the end of the day, a lot of what we're teaching people is fundamentals of the game, and like you said, teaching them how to play baseball.

[20:05] Aman Loomba: That's really it. 

Programming the Baseball Mind

[20:07] Chris Colabello: When I realized what programming actually was, I didn't know what being a developer or understanding engineering, any of that stuff, like being a software engineer. I was just doing a bunch of conditional logic in my brain at all times, right? It took Bobby explaining that to me. For me to have the foresight to understand that every moment in a game for me was just conditional logic, right?

[20:26] Chris Colabello: I'm thinking, well, if this guy does this, and, and you do that in a bunch of different layers, right? So there's so much information and the maturity and the ability to get to that point of you have to be informed to be a great player. And the sooner you can get access to that information and do it with just an awareness of what it all means and start to build that resume and that repertoire and that database for yourself of how to apply it.

[20:48] Chris Colabello: Then you become really dangerous because then there's nothing that can happen to you physically that can affect you.

Is It Ever Too Early to Introduce Data to Kids?

[20:58] Narration: In youth sports when it comes to data and statistics, there's always the question, how early is too early? But maybe that's not the right question. Maybe what we should be asking is what are we teaching and what role should data play? 

[21:13] Bobby Tewksbary: So pitch speed is a perfect example of like, are we starting too soon?

[21:18] Bobby Tewksbary: So at every age as a player, every age, there's going to be a pitch speed that feels fast, and there's going to be a pitch speed that feels slow. And as you get older, the fast number gets higher and the slow number gets higher. But you always need to learn how to hit pitching that's quick and makes you feel like you need to be quick and you always need to have a tactic and a way and strategy to hit pitching that feels slow.

[21:42] Bobby Tewksbary: That number just moves up as you get faster, as you get more athletic, as you process faster. But that happens when you're eight. So teaching that as like a baseline, like. You have to teach something. You're not just gonna throw the kids out there and just let 'em play 'cause that's not gonna go well. So as soon as you graduate from T-Ball to moving ball, there's things happening that you can teach around and those become such fundamental and foundational things for everything else that's gonna happen.

The Importance of Teaching the Fundamentals

[22:08] Bobby Tewksbary: Everything starts to stack. So getting the fundamentals right and teaching that foundation, I would argue that it's almost never too early. I hit in the backyard with my daughters. They're five and seven. When they swing and miss, they say, oh, I was over, or I was under because two years ago I said, Hey, when you swing and miss, if the ball goes here or the bat goes here, that's what over and under is.

[22:28] Bobby Tewksbary: And they self assess so quickly now, and I don't have to because I introduced it to 'em, made 'em understand why it was important. Now they, we can watch a game on TV and they say, oh, she was over over that one. She was under that one because it's just been introduced to them. 

[22:41] Chris Colabello: So we got two- and three-year-olds that can use iPhones.

[22:44] Chris Colabello: I don't think anything's too early anymore. Yeah, right. Like that's, it's the reality of the times we're in, I think information's everywhere and they're, people are gonna seek out information. I think young players that are passionate about the game can seek and find information. We just need to provide a really good resource for them.

[22:58] Alex Trezza: I feel like what you guys have developed right, is the way to teach the player the things we were doing in our brains. We were collecting the data, we were analyzing the data, and then we were making adjustments on the fly. So would you say that what you guys are doing right now is teaching those players to do that in a time where

[23:19] Alex Trezza: the other analytics stuff, the other tech is teaching 'em to be, like you said, like a lesson player or a showcase player, right? We're trying to extract the real player out of them, so to speak. 

[23:32] Bobby Tewksbary: You nailed you a hundred percent. 

[23:33] Chris Colabello: Nailed it. And I think the funny thing is, Alex, just, and I'll let Bobby talk on this too.

[23:38] Chris Colabello: I think the purpose of tech and data is to help humans do things faster and more efficient, not to cloud their vision. Right? And, and if you really look at what's happened in the baseball space. We started tracking a bunch of stuff for a while, right? And it, no offense to the people who built it, they built really cool stuff that worked really well, but they didn't really understand the game.

[24:01] Chris Colabello: They weren't baseball people necessarily. And I don't mean that offensively. 'Cause understanding how hard you hit a ball is great. I can watch a guy hit a ball and I don't need to know the number to understand whether he hit it hard the same way all three of us can. So as humans, we're running those algorithms all the time.

[24:16] Chris Colabello: What we've created right now, right, is just an ability to do that. When my eyes aren't watching. Like I I, I said that to people. I need to be able to know what that guy's over there is doing when I'm not watching the game. And I think that's probably the biggest wrench in the debate between old school and new school is,

[24:33] Chris Colabello: old school guys are going, Hey, like I know that that ball was hit hard and I know launching, they probably don't know how to orate it well 'cause they get really upset that they think that machines and spreadsheets are taking over the game. But I think those machines and spreadsheets are bringing a lot of insight that if we just marry those two worlds, like, magical stuff can happen.

[24:52] Aman Loomba Yeah.

[24:54] Alex Trezza: And that's where I was going next too. I, because the new school, old school stuff and you kind of hit it on the head. It's the same, it is old school. It's just like. It's got a new face on it, so to speak, and you gotta be able to use it, you know? 

Measuring What Matters Most

[25:04] Bobby Tewksbary: Yeah. I kinda like describing what we do as process-based metrics as opposed to outcome-based metrics.

[25:09] Bobby Tewksbary: We wanna know why something happened so we can change the how. Where, oh, everybody's focused on what, what happened? What was the velocity? What was the velo? What was the physical execution? Is great, but I'm more concerned about the prep and that's kind of more just our lens and like it's the work that goes into it that causes the result.

[25:29] Bobby Tewksbary: Like that's what I wanna see. One of my favorite stats that it just shines a light on, like why context is missing is 50% of swings don't put the ball in play. The reason players don't make outs is it's often not the pitch that they made the out on. It's the pitch two previous that they fouled off or they swung through, or they didn't swing at that they should have the, the good pitch to hit that they didn't put in play, and that data's missing right now. That data doesn't exist in the current model is because they don't ask the question.

[26:02] Bobby Tewksbary: So we're not getting to root cause with the existing systems, and that's why we ask the questions that we ask 'cause we need better answers. 

[26:08] Chris Colabello: But just to add to that, like what are you trying to accomplish with your data set, right? Like the ability to track a game is awesome and create a box core and create outputs for people.

[26:16] Chris Colabello: And, this is kind of my shameless plug for GameChanger. I think what GameChanger is doing is amazing, right? Because. I would've died to have access to that stuff. When I was a kid. My dad was keeping stats on a piece of paper, right? Like from our whole team. I'd come home and my dad would have the sheet.

[26:29] Chris Colabello: You wanna know why I was so obsessed with hitting 300 trends? Like Lou is sticking it in my face every day. But you know, to that point, like I think that stuff is incredible for kids to have access to. Right? And they can gain their insights from that about how they're performing and how they're stacking up against their competition as it relates to development,

Life Lessons Through Sports

[26:46] Chris Colabello: I think the stuff that that Bobby's talking about is so critical because. If I really want to help a player get better, I need to help 'em understand those things. When sports really come together and it, it can be magical. It can be magical for life development and, and life skills that I tell people all the time.

[27:01] Chris Colabello: The game has taught me so much about life. It's part of the reason why I could be very unemotional about things and not get too worked up or characteristics that I think my friends will tell you that I have. I'm pretty even keel. I'm, you know, I'm sarcastic, but I don't get too high or too low very often.

[27:17] Chris Colabello: And, and I think those are incredible qualities for young people to gain, especially in a, in a world that's kind of interesting right now. 

[27:24] Aman Loomba: Excellent. Yeah, that's really core to the philosophy of GameChanger, that we think carefully about the role that we play in the world of youth sports. And we're not just looking to extract from it, but add to it and support it and support the parts that are the healthiest and the best and, and the most interesting.

[27:44] Aman Loomba: And the, you know, the reason I asked how young is too young is 'cause we get that question at GameChanger all the time. You know parents who write in and say, what are you guys doing? Why are you trying to tell a 9-year-old? They're batting average. They don't need to know their batting average. They're gonna get obsessed, or they're gonna compare themselves to the kids.

[27:56] Aman Loomba: They're gonna feel bad, which they have a point, but it's all in the way you use it. It's all in how you interpret it, and the context that you give to the player who's getting the data and what you tell them to do with it is gonna make the difference. 

[28:08] Chris Colabello: Totally. And I think we need to be more honest with people, right?

[28:10] Chris Colabello: We need to be honest. If you wanna be good, you have to understand who you are. That's kind of what Bobby and I went through. That's how we became friends. Like I don't see any, any problems with it because like, it's okay to say, hey, you're, you're not great today. The, the objective is to be better tomorrow.

[28:24] Chris Colabello: Right? Like, that's where the line is. 

[28:26] Aman Loomba: Mm-hmm. 

[28:27] Chris Colabello: How am I gonna make tomorrow better than today? And that's growth mindset, right? 

[28:30] Bobby Tewksbary: There's a lot of negativity around youth sports right now, and a lot of it is warranted. When I see those things or when I feel those things, I just always remind myself just what an opportunity to make change happen.

[28:41] Aman Loomba:Mm-hmm

Helping Young Players Love the Game

[28:41] Bobby Tewksbary:When you play against a team that beats you, you should be thankful. Good. Like they just exposed what I need to work on. The challenge is everybody's trying to win rings when they're young. I think that's too young to like, you're putting pressure on the wrong things and kids are falling in love with winning as opposed to growing and getting better and that, that gets dangerous.

[29:01] Bobby Tewksbary: 'cause if you fall in love with winning, when you stop winning, you stop playing. If you fall in love with the game and fall in love with the process and appreciate and respect your opponents for the right reasons, like the sport's gonna stay with you throughout your life, you're gonna be a fan when you're an adult.

[29:14] Bobby Tewksbary: You're gonna introduce it to your kids. It is gonna be that special thing. But yeah, it's just what an opportunity. Feedback like that from a parent. Why are you keeping track of batting average? And I get it, like, do you need to know your batting average? Maybe not. Do you want to know? 

[29:27] Chris Colabello: I did. 

[29:28] Bobby Tewksbary: Yeah. I was gonna say, you might end up in the big leagues, but when failure happens, it's important to understand why.

[29:35] Bobby Tewksbary: And that like the emotion of failure happens when you don't understand it and you're, you don't know what to fix. If I know that I'm not recognizing pitches and I need to go work on that and practice that and get educated about that, I cannot wait. We're gonna start getting kids, getting to the car after the game and be like, oh, I saw a two seamer today.

[29:53] Bobby Tewksbary: The parents will be like, what is that? It's like, oh, there's a difference between a four seam and a two seam fastball. And they're gonna get excited about noticing details. The game's gonna grow with them and they're gonna grow with the game and it's gonna be, so, I can't wait till we start getting those messages.

[30:05] Bobby Tewksbary: 'cause our CEO, his son is starting to like really track his own games. 'cause we just got this out. And the conversations that he's having with his son have completely transformed. Like it, it's a different world that they've entered as dad and son. And it’s just, it's really cool for us, for Chris and I to experience it,

[30:23] Bobby Tewksbary: 'cause we know, we know what's coming for them. If you take these steps, your whole experience with the game will be transformed. 

[30:29] Chris Colabello: To add to what Bobby's saying, right? So I was a really anxious kid. I was super emotional. I needed to perform well in order to feel like I was worth something, right? And the bigger challenge was I was judging myself based off whether I got two hits that day or whether I hit a homer in Little League and I identified as a baseball player.

[30:46] Chris Colabello: That was my identity as a human. I had no idea how to be objective about why I was making outs. I had no context. I didn't have that information until I got older. And even when I got older, at that point, it was hard to shake the things that I had built in me when I was a kid. So Alex mentioned, you know, I needed to hit 300. If I was hitting 299

[31:05] Chris Colabello: I had anxiety. I, I dealt with real anxiety and depression at different points in my life, in my career. And then at some point I learned how to become objective about all that stuff. And so understanding that in combination, like you have to kind of be a little bit like you've gotta want to achieve in our game, but you've also gotta be humble enough to understand

[31:25] Chris Colabello: why it's happening and how it's happening and that it can happen. So my bigger goal, personally, is to just be able to provide that to a young player and say like, hey man, you went, oh for four today, you played great. 'cause that didn't exist in my world. It wasn't like,even a thing. Now we can tell that story.

[31:48] Narration: For some families and youth athletes, using tools like Pelotero is changing their experience with the game for the better. Access to data offers a point of connection between players and their parents, between the athlete and the game. And the deeper that connection goes, the more their love of the game can grow.

[32:07] Narration: This has been Athletic Intelligence from GameChanger. If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to follow, rate, and share it. I hope you'll join us next time as we uncover the tech that's shaping the game.