NEW YORK–One minute, I was sipping an iced green tea at a midtown Manhattan Starbucks.
The next, I was sitting behind the plate at a Major League stadium as Cleveland Indians closer Cody Allen threw 97 MPH fastballs at my face.
It was all thanks to a virtual reality demo from EON Sports VR, a peek inside technology that MLB teams have already started using to help them gain a real competitive advantage.
EON recently announced a partnership with the Tampa Bay Rays that allows players to use one of their VR simulators — a 10-by-10 room that EON Sports CEO can only describe as the “holodeck” from Star Trek — to dial up any pitcher they’re facing and see a real-time simulation of what they’re about to see at the plate. They can stand behind the dish or in the batter’s box to study the pitches as they come in. There’s even an option to swing and “connect” with those pitches.
“Some guys like to see the last five at-bats against a pitcher,” Reilly told For The Win during a visit to New York. “Some guys like to get a feel on timing. They all say the same thing: ‘How I hit this pitcher is predicated on timing.'”
Reilly says the company developed the simulator — which uses an absurd amount of data to get everything from a pitcher’s arm slot to the movement on his slider correct and requires a group of employees to update the database daily — as a training tool to be used in Spring Training or for minor leaguers to experience pro-level pitching.
But he never foresaw players using it as an in-game tool. If a batter sees a reliever in the opposing bullpen preparing to enter a game, the hitter can dash down to the simulator and visually prepare for how his pitches move, along with the changes in timing and eye level.
Rays outfielder Steven Souza Jr., who’s started his third season in the Majors with a .293 average and five home runs, sang the praises of the simulator to the Tampa Bay Times:
“It’s pretty awesome. I think anytime you can see a pitcher before you actually get in there, it’s unbelievable. It’s like standing in the bullpen. And how many times do you honestly get to do that for the opposing team?”
Toronto Blue Jays shortstop Troy Tulowitzki appeared to be pretty impressed when he got a chance to take the simulator for a spin at CES earlier this year:
The system isn’t without its skeptics — veteran third baseman Evan Longoria told the Times the simulator is “crude” at the moment, but he could see how it’s “a huge step in the right direction in helping guys prepare to be better players.”
EON focused on football for years, with pro teams (Tampa Bay Buccaneers) and colleges (Syracuse, Purdue, Ole Miss) using a quarterback simulator that can, for example, quiz QBs on identifying middle linebackers and their first option after the snap.
But Reilly said a meeting with former Colorado Rockies general manager Dan O’Dowd helped him and his company realize there was a place for this kind of training in baseball. And Reilly, a former student assistant under Kansas’ Bill Self and an ex-assistant basketball coach a Illinois State, figured out five years that the use of technologically-based simulations in sports was an untapped goldmine.
Now, Reilly says, his phone has been “ringing off the hook” with calls from MLB teams, though the company has deals with some franchises already in place. The company is also working on a project with teams in the English Premier League, but he can’t go into detail yet about what, exactly, EON is developing.
“I think we can use technology in a better way to enhance the training process,” Reilly remembers thinking in 2011 before he left the college basketball world to pursue his vision. “I learned from human performance experts that said there’s no better way to teach and train than have to some sort of simulated component within the process.”
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