Any questions for me before we get started? Nope. Cool if I just record this through the phone, it won't be any video stuff. It'll won't be audio. It'll just be like pulling quotes and everything. Okay, yeah. Eileen? Morning. Sorry. Perfect. So before we get into the analytics talk, obviously you've played softball at Bowling Green jumped around a little bit. What brought you here to Mizzou? Um,
so initially, the reason I came to Mizzou was to be the volunteer assistant. And honestly, it was just the chance to get to work with the staff to be in the SEC to be at the highest level and to really experience what that was like. I've kind of was mid major before and Division Two, and I knew that life and I still love that life and respect that life. But I just wanted to see what the next level was really like. And this was a great opportunity to do that, especially with a program that was just continuing to grow and get better each year. So I thought that would be a really fun opportunity. For an opportunity for me to come and learn and it's definitely been that and more. So what
do you think has been like the biggest thing or like the biggest difference between the SEC type play and some of those mid majors that you've been with before?
Oh, definitely the resources so being in an SEC school, you know, they have the athletes have access to nutrition resources, academic resources on recovery is a huge difference. You know, they have all different tools to help them recover better and faster. And just things that at a smaller school there's not necessarily the budget for so here they get treated like like a world class. athlete, you know, like a high level person whereas sometimes at the lower levels, it just it can't quite be done that way so you got to get a little bit more creative. But it's definitely nice to experience that here and get to see all that you know, all the great things that they could do enjoy being an athlete here at Mizzou. Obviously
now, one of those advantages having people like you on staff so what for you has this role? What does this role really entail for you as a whole if you could best describe it?
Yeah, so that was kind of interesting this summer because they got her the volunteer so this I kind of transitioned into this role and I don't have an analytics degree which is something that people traditionally have in this role. So it has been kind of a learn on the fly thing for me. And I took the time this summer to meet with several different director of player development and both baseball and softball and just learn what they do and how they do it and why they do it and what they do for their players. And so I've tried to take that and bring that to our team. So giving them weekly reports giving them their you know, different stats with different things or with different areas that they could improve on without also bogging them down. So it's important to be at the hitting sessions everyday for me are the defensive sessions are a practice every day so that I can actually see what they need to work on and up till the coaches talk to coaching staff about that and then how they can apply the analytics piece to the actual practice piece without overwhelming them with numbers sets.
So you want to run me through a couple of these sheets that you got. Yeah, wonderfully appreciated. Yeah, like it's definitely something easier when you can actually like see it and then like what's going on in each one?
Exactly. Yeah. So um, so this is the font right on top here. So this they get every three weeks they get this one so it has your kind of traditional stats at the top. Um, this is a little bit more in depth. So first pitch swinging, taking one taking the first strike, how often they take the first strike, how often they swing and miss their swing percent shake up percent, and it goes on with that. And then this is what they call sabermetrics. So for each different type of pitch on a curveball, Stefania swings 46% of the time, she hasn't left in the last three weeks on a curveball which is awesome. Um, she swings in the zone 86% of the time. And she, this is the shadow zone so it's kind of like chasing but not quite 32% of time. So kind of just getting into all this and this is where it's a little bit too much for the players sometimes like to be actually thinking about that. So basically what we boil it down, like in this case with Jeff would be okay, here's her hot zones. So her extra base hits are coming on inside pitches, but she's chasing a lot of outside and high pitches. So this is where we want to get her working more towards hunting the inside part of the zone, if that makes sense. Same with swing. So this is what she's swinging at. This is where she's hitting, excuse me hitting line drives. So kind of using these numbers up here for the coaching staff to boil it down into what we need to do mechanically or mentality wise or however it may be with the players. And then on a weekly basis, the pitchers get something similar, sorry. So on a weekly basis, they get they get this they get this sensor every series so this is their swing decision model. So this is all the pitches she saw. This is what she swung at. These are pitches she took and what we really want to avoid years anything in this middle region because those are pitches we should really be capitalizing on. And these are with swing and misses. And then same thing with less than two strikes with two strikes. And then we break it down. Oh swings, oh takes swings in the first three pitches and takes in the first three. So really a lot of information but you know, like I said what a lot of them will use is did I have any bad tapes are bad swings, that's all some of them do. Some of them like to get into the Okay, why is my approach changing with two strikes? Or why is it different Oh than it is? When I have to or when I have less than two strikes or whatever it may be the first three pitches. So it's kind of up to them how in depth they want to get with this stuff. But then the pitchers get the same thing. So this is Craig's for the last three weeks. It's the same type of stats but just for pitching so kind of the inverse. And then um this is creams. This is what she gets weekly. What the pitchers get weekly, so it's their pitch performance. So this is all of their pitches are sorry, this is fastball curveball, screw rise, drop change, and then it kind of just showing their swing and misses what they got outside. Where batters took it where betters got hits on and then any extra base hits that they may have given up which again, for them, it's the opposite. They want to avoid throwing in, you know that middle middle zone. So that's something we kind of they get every single week. And then I this is kind of a cool thing too. I want to show you so this is the catching catching model that we use. And so this is Julia Crenshaw, this is for the whole year. And so red is good blue is bad. So all the red dots are what she made stripe. So this is what they consider the shadows on. What's really cool is the areas she struggles with or the areas that she's good at. You could highlight so I could highlight one of these dots and on the computer, you can watch a video directly related to that pitch. So you can immediately give the feedback and go over. Okay, you missed a you didn't get the strike here and here's why. Or, okay, you got all of these stripes. Let's watch why you're really good on this corner at making those pitches of the stripes. So it's just good tools to be able to give them some some feedback and there are 643 and synergy this is all directly linked to video, which makes it even better because then they can see with their own eyes. Oh, I really am doing that I you know I should adjust this or you know, whatever, whatever changes they need to make or whatever they need to keep doing well they can actually see it themselves, which is pretty cool.
That is extremely cool. So like, for example, when we're looking at this sheet like when you're reading this for the first time of course as someone who played softball, how do you like read and see okay, what stands out to you the most like when you're just looking at the sheet, like what can you take from this chart and tell the players pretty much like yes,
so I think the biggest thing that we take from this one specifically, are these hot zones. So it's kind of showing them Okay, so here's Crenshaw, it is just kind of showing them like okay, this is where you're being pitched. So this kind of is telling you your scouting report in a way it's like why is everybody throwing you in this case to the lower outside corner you know, so it's like and this is where your extra base hits our this is where your all of your other hits are this is where you're hitting it well. In reverse that here's where you're chasing pitches. Here's where you're taking strikes, and here's where you're swinging and missing. So it's kind of like being able to, because the numbers don't resonate so much with a lot of them but the visuals they're like, oh, wow, okay, I can see that. You know, that's the location of pitches from extra base hits, but then why am I swinging all the majority of my swings are in the opposite zone. So it's kind of just working on rewiring that mentality of what are you really good at doing right now and what are you what can you you know, we call it hunting. Are you hunting in the zone are you looking to drive and so I think for from a player perspective, that's definitely um, the things that stand out the most of them. For us, I would say a lot of their contact percent swing and miss percent, um, how much they're swinging in the zone. So how much they are hunting those pitches that they can actually hit, how the percentage that they're chasing, would be all things that our staff looks at just because well, that's that's something you might have hitters thinking about in the box. It is important to know that or to know in this situation, this person is really good versus you know, maybe in in a runner's on situation, somebody isn't great in that spot, you know, so just kind of knowing either way so that we can make the best decisions. And coach knows, Coach Anderson knows a ton about that, so that because she's making a lot of those decisions so that she knows who's the best to pull in what situation. So
when you look and you see all of this data in bargain with it's so close, is there something that you wish you would have had when you were playing softball, or do you think it might be it might be a little too much?
Oh my gosh, yes. We talked about that all the time. I would have loved to have that. And that's another resource thing like I talked about earlier. We have a tool called synergy and they can get on and watch entire games they can get on and watch one page they can get on there and filter I want to see what I do against a curveball and to to count with a runner on second. Like they can filter down to the smallest detail and it's like, I think I would have been obsessed with that in college like been on there every single day and watching the video. And then we have another tool. It's called Dartfish. And we record every single practice, we record every single swing that they take, for the most part, someone in the cages we don't get unless we have the iPads down there but on the field, we record all of that. So if they want feedback after practice, they can literally go get on their computer and watch you know, within two hours, they can watch practice. They can watch their bats at practice. They can watch what they were doing in defensive shifts they can watch in defensive coverages what they were doing if they did well if they miss something, so I would have loved it personally. I talked about that all the time. I'm like, I would have been on this stuff. 24/7 I think I probably would have done a lot less school. Um, but yeah, so I think it's a great tool. For some people it is too much. And so that's where you really just got to create the relationship with the players and get to know who needs what and who can use all the information and who is going to get a little bogged down by it. So just kind of knowing your people was important for for that aspect too. To be able to apply it is as good as possible. So
is this your first year in the role or have you been doing this for a little bit now?
No, this is my first year in the role. So I was the volunteer assistant last year and then transition to this this year. And like I said, it's kind of been a learning on the fly thing. Something really cool is that we are creating a student analytics team. So right now we only have two people but they're awesome. They use R and Python which are things that I don't know how to use their model building programs that they're creating for our team. And so that's really awesome getting to work with them and just kind of see even more in depth. What we can do and where we can take this and really looking to take that off next year especially to so
I know obviously especially in the major leagues, there's been this renaissance of analytics is this something that you've known trickled down to both college baseball and softball that you've seen? Especially because now this type of role is available for you?
Yes, exactly. Big time. Yeah. So um, I would say you know, baseball is probably had this going on 10 to 15 years and softballs a little bit behind. But it is catching up. And that's what's really cool and really exciting is I think people are starting to see that and like you said, the roles are expanding. The source of the schools with the resources are creating positions like this to be able to focus on this type of stuff and so that's really cool. That's really fun to see. Um, we're gonna be getting we were supposed to get it in the fall. There's been some supply chain issues, but we're going to be getting a yak detect system, which is a system that will tell us give us data on every single ball thrown. So it'll give hitter data. It'll give pitcher data, every single thing that happens on the field. It'll have a number assigned to it, which is really cool. We had a very neat opportunity last year at Florida. They had the system and they sent it they have to share the information when we're playing an SEC school. And we were able to analyze Lauren Creek design when she's throwing harder her vertical and horizontal break versus when she's throwing a little bit, you know, a little bit softer, not as hard so 72 to 67 and the difference in the horizontal and vertical break and if she had more break, you know, taking a couple of miles an hour off of it, which is really important information to know and so that's just as this continues to grow across the sport, that's going to be there's going to be more and more opportunity for rolls like this and for people that are interested in the analytic side of it, but also love the softball side of it. Absolutely. When
you look at this Mizzou team, especially compared to a lot of these other teams in the SEC Have you noticed that you guys are using analytics more or less or does it feel pretty rudimentary across the board that everyone's using the same program? So everyone's kind of on an even playing field? Yeah,
um, that's a good question. I would, I would say, of the programs I've talked to, we use it about the same or a little bit more. I know we video more than other schools because we we have the video rolling every day. Um, but it's it's tough to know exactly what each program is doing if you don't talk to them directly, but some of them like I said, this summer I spoke to some of them to just learn from them. And so I would say we're at least trying to do things that they were willing to share I guess that they told me about so we're doing that and then kind of expanding on our own and I'm sure every programs kind of doing the same thing and you know, then you have the old school more old fashioned where they don't use it as much and so I think it's just a program to program thing. But it is interesting because like we were saying earlier, these power five schools have more opportunities to do this right now. Whereas as you were saying within 510 years, I predict that it will trickle down into all levels of softball, which will be really cool to see.
You mentioned some of these programs not like to use it as much. Obviously, you're someone who's very pro analytics, because I mean, that's your whole job. Can you think of any like, good reason not to use analytics or any reason not to collect all this data or really communicate that with the players?
No no, I can't because the thing is, even if you collect it in your players are overwhelmed by it or they don't want to use it or you know, you can collect it and still go gut feeling it which you know, Coach Anderson is really good at balancing so she will collect all this information and she'll have all this information in the third base box but or calling pitches, but maybe it's just like, I just have a feeling right now that we should do this instead. You know, so we can know. We know exactly when a team is gonna bind or exactly. The scouting report on us when we're gonna bump but if it's like, I know that Kaylee winter is gonna get this down, right now, then maybe she calls it anyway, you know, so I think it's a fine balance for sure. But I don't see any reason why you wouldn't want to know this information. When you
think about the season as a whole. Obviously, you played a lot of games. Do you remember any tangential time where you've collected all this data and then you've seen a player kind of take that into effect and result in the success on the field.
I think Molly Jacobson has done a really good job with showing that chart I just showed you without going over it with our pitchers, and kind of working through bullpens with them on that of you know, extra base hits are happening in this location for a reason. So let's try to tailor our bullpens to where we're avoiding, you know, these three middle zones so I don't know if it's immediate like that, but I think she has done really cool things with applying that to the bullpen into the practices which then carry over onto the field and then same with the hitters. Jeff has really talked to them about I don't want you to stress and get bogged down about these different numbers or the zones. But when we're hitting I do want you thinking about okay, this is what I do really well. This is where I can drive a pitch really well and and be able to apply that to your swing kind of and so in addition to these we use pit tracks, which is a system that tracks every single batted ball and we have it in the cages so unfortunately it can't be used during the games but we do use it in the cages and so even on you know in the fall will sometimes have like the exit Velo days, and the two can hit the highest exit below. But then Jeff has a great point to it of, okay, you don't have to necessarily swing harder to have a higher xOP low you just have to have all the right movements and mechanics, and it's gonna come out through that harder. So it's a way that he uses tech to prove a point. Very
cool. Had a question that I lost it. Oh, yeah. Is there anything else about the analytics team about anything that you've shown me here about the effect on the team that I haven't touched on that is like important that you want to tell me about anything you didn't say like dying to? Let me know.
Hmm. So I think a cool a cool piece of it is that our team I've seen a huge growth in our team from almost being afraid of it to wanting to learn more, and I think that's just an N A huge attribute of this group is that they are so eager to get better. And no matter what it is or what way or what information it is that they need to get better. They want to know it. So that's been really cool to see this year. Because I think they like getting this stuff. I think they use it. We haven't chart all their own pitches and go watch their bats and a little hitting reflection book and the pitchers do that from time to time as well. And so just being able to reflect and actually kind of analyze what you what your performance was, I think is really cool from our team's perspective. Something else that's kind of neat is especially when we get yakker tech, but even now with hit tracks, we can use it for recruiting purposes. So when we have camps, you know we can have we have all the information of what our team does. So when we have kids here at a camp and we're using this technology, we can really see Do they measure up to what we need to play at the highest level, you know, and of course they're high school kids, so they're not they might not have that exact level right now. But are they close? Can we do we give him a couple pointers during the camp and they make an adjustment and they get even closer, you know, things like that that can really benefit us in the in the recruiting aspects. Um, and I think just the other thing is that this can be used for scouting as well. So it's, it's kind of like everything I showed you that we just that we do with our team. We can do this on any player in the country. So we can have all this information and then just kind of like we were talking about earlier, have a nice balance of using it versus going with your gut feeling and having a nice mix of everything in between. Because I think there's still something to be said for you know, playing the situation and playing the game as they would say old fashion right. So having that mixed in with knowing all this information. But yeah, I think I think that's about all of it. You know, we we use the 643 of you synergy we start fishing. Next year, we're expanding or we're doing yakker tech, there might be some blast stuff coming in. So I think it's just really cool. Seeing it grow not just within the sport, but even just here at Mizzou. Having a program that supports the growth of analytics and not just supports it but encourages it and wants to use it and apply it. So I think that's the really cool opportunity here.
This was really insightful. I had no idea about any of this stuff. So this is really cool to see like actually what you guys use and what it looks like. If you'd be able to like send it to Eric and send it to me again. I don't want to give away any of your secrets but like if you could just tell them like this is like personally you stuff or I can put it in an article that'd be great. But again, I don't want to like give away any crucial information that sort of thing. Yeah,
but later said honestly a lot of this is like we have all this but sort of all the other schools so you know, they can access this as easily as we can access it on them. I mean, not just to check with the coach, but I'm sure that wouldn't be an issue because I actually forgot to show you this. But this is like so this is our team overall. And this is where you can break it down that those advanced analytics so we're seeing almost four pitches per plate appearance, first pitch swing taking first pitch swing and miss swing percent grumble percent and then kind of the short game or speed score so then this is cool but then like so I use galley as an example. Because she's a person who it's kind of interesting because her spray chart when she's hitting it hard to the outfield is more dominant left side she's going a little bit oppo, but when she is breaking down mechanically a little bit rolling over hitting ground balls, whatever, it's a little bit more pull side so just kind of cuz she's a lefty, so just kind of interesting. You can break this down for each player. And we can do this for other teams too, which is cool. And then it gives you some numbers back here, a little bit more in depth and then you can see galley and then the whole team. So yeah, you can keep that one and you can keep this one if you want thank you. I have to hand these out today. So I'll send you a digital copy but I'm sure she won't mind but I'll just double check with her and then yes,
don't don't want to be stepping on toes. No, no, no, of
course not. Yeah, but thanks for taking the time to come and chat about this pretty cool. Thank you.
