SportTechie’s new series features the views and opinions of the athletes who use and are powered by technology. As part of this series, SportTechie sat down with Jed Lowrie to find out about how data and technology are impacting baseball and his opportunities within the sport.
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Oakland A’s second baseman Jed Lowrie is a sabermetric darling. The 34-year-old, who earned his first All-Star Game selection this season, might not be physically imposing but has good plate discipline and pop in his swing. That has translated into a robust .355 on-base percentage and a career-high 21 home runs in 2018. He has played for three of the game’s most data-driven teams: the Red Sox, Astros, and A’s.
Lowrie played college ball at Stanford University, where he was a first-team All-American. He was a supplemental first-round pick (No. 45 overall) by the Red Sox in the 2005 MLB draft, the same draft that many baseball experts consider the deepest, most talent-rich class in the sport’s history. (Though he left Stanford after his junior year, he went back to complete his degree in political science, graduating in 2011.) Since his major league debut on April 15, 2008, the switch-hitting Lowrie has tallied 1,032 career hits and 102 career homers.
At this week’s SportTechie NEXT conference in the Bay Area, Lowrie shared his thoughts on how advanced data gleaned from technologies like Statcast is influencing the game, shining a light on hitters’ underlying abilities (through exit velocity and launch angle) and fueling rises in strikeouts and overshifts.
Playing for Data-Driven Teams
“I don’t think that’s a coincidence. You look at me physically, and I’m not the guy that a scout is going to say ‘Hey, that guy can play the game.’ But then you look at the numbers, and that’s why I got drafted where I did. That’s probably why I moved through the minor leagues as quickly as I did because the data and the statistics backed up what I was doing.”
The Evolution of Baseball Data
“When I first made it to the major leagues, you literally had the video guy up in the room, and he was tracking pitches, doing his best to say where each pitch had been thrown. I would go up there and knew a pitch was off the plate and the video clearly showed that, but he would say he has to put it in the strike zone because the pitch was called a strike.
“When you put a ball in play, he was the one determining whether it was a hard-hit ball, soft-hit ball, or medium-hit ball. And it was purely based on the eye test of the guy third floor watching the game on TV, not live.
“[Now] Big Brother is watching, that’s for sure. Every time I’m out on the field, you look up and you see the Statcast, the TrackMan [radar], right there looking down, so you know you can’t take any plays off. There’s someone watching every move you make.”
The Impact of Data on His Game
“As a player, all you can do is hit the ball hard. Sometimes that’s easier said than done when, at the end of the day, you’re still being evaluated on batting average, on-base percentage. You want to see those results, but sometimes you have to have a long-term view point and know that if you hit the ball hard consistently, you’re going to have those results.”
“I check [Statcast] regularly. We have our system upstairs in the clubhouse, so if you see me leaving the dugout, 99 percent of the time it’s to go up and look at either video or exit velocity and launch angle. I use that information more as a debriefing. I can figure out that if I take the swing that I wanted to mechanically on a pitch that I know I can hit hard, but the exit velocity wasn’t what I expected it to be, then maybe it’s because my legs aren’t underneath me.
“I had a collision earlier in the year that forced me to cut back on a lot of my lower-body workouts. The next two, three weeks, I was hitting balls that I thought were hard, but Statcast said [they were] not as hard as they should have been. I realized that I don’t need to change anything mechanically—my mechanics look good—I just need to get my legs back underneath me.”
Beating Extreme Shifts
“About a month ago in Minnesota, I had four outfielders. [Twins infielder] Logan Forsythe ran from second base to left field. I stood in the box and had to do a survey to see where everybody was because it’s just natural at this point. You want to know as a hitter where you can see an opportunity. When I looked up and had no idea where Forsythe was, I had to step out of the box and realize there were four outfielders. At that point, I bunted because there was literally no one on the left side of the infield.
“That was actually our only bunt base hit the entire season. We were going for the record, and I went and ruined it.”
Launch Angle
“For me, it’s just about driving the baseball. That, to me, goes back to hitting the ball hard. It’s not necessarily avoiding hitting ground balls, it’s just trying to hit ground balls that are the one-hoppers through the infield as opposed to the choppers. If you’re hitting a chopper, mechanically, you’re either out front or you’re fooled, and the odds of that being a hit are not great. If you hit a low, hard line drive through the infield, I still feel like that has a good chance to be a hit and has long-term success.”
Balancing Data With Performance
“I think we’re in a transition period where you still have major league players who, some still don’t like or believe in some of the newer statistics. I feel like a lot of the younger guys are bigger believers. They’ve bought into a lot of those statistics. Over the next five to 10 years, you’re going to have that transition period where you’re going to have to be able to communicate those statistics to the players effectively. I think that’s gong to be the biggest challenge.
“As a player, someone who has to go out there and perform, there is a point where the information becomes too much. You have to learn how to filter the information and know the information that helps you perform on a day-to-day basis. You can take in a lot of information that you want, but at some point you have to be able to just almost clear your mind, step in the box, and just play the game.
“When I step in the box and I’m facing a guy who I’ve seen 20, 30 times, I’m visualizing in my head what those pitches do. For me, mentally, it’s a lot of visualization where I can recall the experiences that I’ve had and being able to react to those experiences.”
Wearable Devices
“I use them in the offseason more. That’s something I’ve really just started using. It’s more basic stuff like a heart-rate monitor [and Apple Watch] and making sure that, in my cardio work, I’m maintaining a certain heart rate within that work. And then just to track my output and calories burned just to make sure I’m staying on top of my fitness. I know there’s a lot of tech that’s coming out about it—I just haven’t gotten into it yet.”
The State of Baseball
“That, to me, is the biggest conundrum moving forward, right? You have the commissioner’s office pounding pace of play, but then the way that the arbitration system is set up, the way guys are being evaluated, the things that get you paid are the things that slow the game down. I don’t know how you square that circle, but essentially you’ve got what appears [to be] the commissioner’s office having an agenda and what the teams are evaluating fighting each other directly.”