38: Liam Mucklow with Marucci's Baseball Performance Lab

Hey, there are two ways to support this podcast. And if you do like us, we just ask so sincerely and nicely, please do. Number one, leave us a rating. It's super helpful with a small podcast like this to get it in front of more people's eyeballs. And that only happens if the algorithms kick in. And when you rate something 5 stars, it really helps us out because it gets the podcast in front of people like us, which is great. The second way is through affiliate marketing. There's really not a lot of ways to make money on podcasts. We're not big enough. We will never be big enough to make money from ad revenue, but we can make money. The next time you're gonna go buy a bat, look in our descriptions of our podcast if you found it useful, click on one of our partners and go check the prices. Look, it's all the big names, Amazon, Dick's Sporting Goods, and Wilson, and Easton, and Rawlings, you name it, there's probably a link down there you can go find and check out their price. We're not saying overpay for it. If you can find it for a cheaper price somewhere else, wonderful. But we don't, it doesn't cost you anymore, but it does throw a couple bucks our way in the event you use our link and you go to that website and you end up buying it. It's called affiliate marketing, it's been around for a long time. You can read more about those disclaimers on our site. But anyways, if you wanna support us, That's how you do it. We love the support. We love the encouragement for us to keep going on these. And that is the way that we are going to have to make it work. All right. Keep rocking. Thanks. Welcome to the 38th episode of Bat Digest, the podcast. Today we talk with Liam Mucklow out of Louisiana. He runs the Bat Performance Lab for Marucci, works with a bunch of pro players to help design their perfect wood bat, gathers a ton of data. If you've ever looked at their Instagram account before, you'll see a big-time player hooked up to all these wires while they're hitting a baseball. That's his lab. He's the one that runs that. So let's get into it. Liam, welcome to the podcast. Where does this find you?

I am at home in my office in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

Baton Rouge. That's awesome. And how are you connected to Marucci? How does that work exactly? Because you don't— do you work for them or it's the Baseball Performance Lab? How does that all work?

Technically, you know, Marucci would be a client, but, you know, we really think of them as a partner. A couple of years ago, I was out at the PGA Golf Show. I am a golf professional by trade, and I was introduced by one of my mentors, Dr. Greg Rose, to an agent with CAA Baseball. I was at that time informed that there was no such thing as bat fitting and asked if I could figure it out. I said, holy smokes, that's a gigantic question. One thing led to another. I was put in touch with Kyle Orso, VP at Marucci, and, uh, he sent me some test bats. Uh, we repurposed some motion capture systems, purchased a baseball launch monitor, started testing players felt like we were on to something, visited Marucci campus. And from the first time I saw the way they handle their production and the people at the company, I knew this was the baseball company that was, you know, the best possible one to work with. And we forged a partnership about 2 years ago now, and the rest is history.

How similar is it to golf in terms of— I mean, clearly there's, there's a rotation around an axis you're hitting. I mean, the ball's obviously moving versus still, but in terms of the metrics you can measure and look and design, How easy was it to transition?

Well, it wasn't. You know, when we look at it from the athletic performance perspective, you know, I would say about 90% of the physical motions are quite similar. As you mentioned, you know, it is a ballistic rotary sport. We're hitting one thing, you know, you know, we call it stick and ball sport, swinging one thing to hit a ball. At the same time, though, there's, you know, there's very significant differences. Obviously, the fact that the ball is moving in baseball, there's infinite variability with the pitch. And with golf, while the ball is not moving, there's infinite variability with the environment. A good chunk of our first 2 years of studying this endeavor was really digging in to understand how the athlete and the bat work together, because all of the research papers that I could find were all basically focused on static laboratory testing, you know, either MOI machines or ball cannon testing. Nothing actually measuring the interaction between the hitter and the bat. And a huge part of the endeavor has also been, you know, understanding within the rules, you know, specifically of MLB, what can and can't we do with the bat. There's a lot of similarities, but that only gets you to a certain point, and then it's really drilling down and understanding that last 10% that we feel we've worked our butts off with Marucci as well. Because it's one thing to be able to design something, it's another thing to take organic material with incredible amounts of variability like wood and come out with an incredibly consistent, high-quality finished product.

I've seen a handful of Instagram— I think it's on Instagram, maybe it's Facebook, but it's like, it's like some pro player that looks like he's about to get a CAT scan done on him and he's trying to hit a baseball and he's hooked up to all these wires. It's like, it's the— I look at it and I think, this is the future. What are— what's going on there? Like, why do we have sensors on his temple?

They're everywhere.

What's happening when, when you guys are doing that?

Alright, so what you see there is us using an electromagnetic motion capture system. Now that's a mouthful and you don't— for those out there that want to dig into the weeds, they can go and search that up online. That is the only piece of technology that gives us the data quality, data quantity, and does so in real time to give us a completely accurate profile of how the athlete and the bat work together. I'm gonna— I'll go one layer deeper. For some people out there listening, they may be familiar with a bunch of the motion capture systems that are used by colleges and teams. The two downsides of those where they don't work for us is, number one, it typically takes a couple days in order to get a report back, which, you know, makes it, you know, completely unusable in a live fitting environment. And then also, the technology we use is the only one that gives us full 3D wrist information, and that is arguably the most critical when you're analyzing how the bat and the player work together. Subtle changes in wrist angles through the zone have massive implications on bat-to-ball data.

Tell me, how, how useful is it? I mean, it seems like we've been able to measure some things. I think of like HitTrax. I think of Rapsodo. At some point, just because we can measure something, Should we be measuring it, or are we getting lost in sort of the minutiae of big data and we're getting all this feedback and we're like, yeah, just here's a bat, go hit a ball? I mean, at what point do we sort of cut our losses and say just because we can measure it doesn't mean we should be?

Well, you know what, Brian, I got to tell you, I think that's the best question I've ever been asked on any podcast or any presentation I've ever done. It's, it's so meaningful. And so I'll tell a little bit of an anecdotal story here. We went through the same thing in golf. You know, while golf or technology probably is about 15 to 20 years ahead, but early on in golf, and I see the same thing happening in baseball, you know, the technology companies go to the coaches and they talk about all the things that they can measure, and coaches start looking at things that technology can measure. But to your point, what is the value in this information, how applicable is it? And in fact, I think the teams that we work with that I think do the best job do it the exact opposite way, whereas like, let's go to the coach and let's understand, okay, what matters, and then let's figure out a way to measure it. And that's the data that becomes useful. And, you know, so I'll tie back to what we were just talking about with motion capture. You know, we had a lot of options, and there's motion capture systems that in their own way can measure more things than the one that we use, but we use ours specifically because it's the only one that gives us data that is meaningful and will have immediate impact on the athlete.

I like that. It is interesting. I think it's a challenge we'll have over the next several months and years as more data gets in the hands of, of individuals, especially the younger audience. In terms of— I know you work with a lot of professional players. Tell us a little bit about those of us who don't live in the South. And I think there might be one in Las Vegas as well, but don't have access to a performance lab. And maybe that's not even your department, but, but Marucci has like a performance lab, which what you run, but they also have these little outlets where we can go and test bats. How would a player, let's say like a good high school player, maybe even like a good younger travel player, how would they get access to what you're doing?

Well, we're working on it. You know, that's what I can tell you. We're, we've been, uh, we've been in existence coming up on, well, just past 3 years to the day. We're at the point now with some of the challenges we've had, you know, MLB has had, we'll say, that we now have a volume of in-game data and year-over-year data, um, you know, that really does quantify the improvement on performance that we can have at that level. Uh, we have been doing research and fitting at the youth level, uh, for about a year and a half now, so that data set is larger and we're starting to have the findings where we will be able to create actionable items for people if they're not able to come and see us. Now, that being said, Marucci does We have a wide variety of clubhouse locations, emergency clubhouses where people are able to go in and test and experience product. And I can also share with you a lot of— there's a lot of things that we do that aren't on social media. Those are some things that we integrate new design and technology based on player-driven data into their actual products available to the market.

Can you give us an example of data you might capture on a pro player and how that turns into actionable, useful information?

Talk about one particular player. He is a first-round draft pick, top-10 draft pick, excellent season in AA ball last year. Came in to see us after the season with a very specific request. He was looking for more vertical bat angle low in the zone. So we went ahead, you know, began our normal process. You know, the first thing we did was go through bats with different BPI, uh, or balance point index, that, you know, for a lot of players that often changes the way the bat's delivered. This particular individual, their grip strength was, you know, absolutely off the charts. So the change in, uh, in BPI— for those that aren't familiar with it, just cycling back and forth between what's traditionally called, you know, end-loaded versus balanced and different varying degrees thereof— we looked at the wrist angle data that we had from our motion capture system, and then we compared it with his movement screens, and we saw that he was physically capable of having more lead wrist bottom hand for baseball, uh, flexion and ulnar deviation. That led us to then run an experiment where we actually narrowed the handle and knob diameter. That allowed him to dynamically achieve greater mobility. In the wrist, and he was able to create the bat delivery condition that he desired.

That's awesome, man. I think that actually even made sense to me, if you can believe it.

Well, you know, for, for the people that are out there going, what the heck did this guy just say? If you have a bat handy— I'm actually holding one I've got right here by my desk— all you need to do, grab the bat by the barrel, hold your arm out in front, point the bat as high as you can up to the roof, and then try point it down at the floor without your arm moving, then grab the bat by the narrowest part of the handle, do the exact same thing, and take a look at how much more range of motion you have moving that bat.

And I bet you it's a lot more, right?

You got it. Absolutely.

So if somebody wanted a flatter bat in some part of the zone, you could adjust the handle on a wood bat to help them do that because they have better flexion in their, in their wrist, right?

That would be an option. And in the same token, there's a lot of hitters that we have come in that are looking to eliminate excessive movement from the wrist and the The opposite can be, you know, quite effective for most people. So, you know, if there's any baseball dads out there and they're, you know, their kids get a little risky, I would— first thing I would do is, you know, grab a couple lizard skins and build up that handle. Wow.

That's the coolest advice I think this podcast has ever had. I've never heard anybody talk about the value of a different width of a grip. I've always just thought it was a simple— simply a preference. But that, that makes a lot of sense. Wow.

Well, you know, Brian, and that's— to go back to one of my earlier points, what was motivating to close down golf academies, to start to study a new sport, to take on this risk was that everywhere we looked, we could not find information studying how the bat and athlete work together. Everything, you know, is when you— whether we're doing cannon testing or whether we're doing MOI testing, durability performance, whatever, None of that information is going to, is going to be able to give us guidance like what, you know, like what we're talking about right now.

That's just fascinating stuff. We love what you're doing and we, we are excited to see where it goes. And I'm sure all that information you're gathering feeds ultimately into Youth Bats as well. Obviously, would Youth Bats— how much, how much direct— I guess maybe it's just feedback, but how much conversations do you have with them on the And by them, I mean Marucci, on the non-wood side of things?

More and more every day. You know, back to— we're talking about the flood that, you know, that caused severe damage to, you know, to Marucci, to the lab we operate in. As part of the rebuild, all of the, the bat lab, which is performance cannon, durability cannon, all of that stuff for the metal bats, is now immediately next door. We've actually got windows back and forth between our labs. So You know, on a daily basis, we're over in there. And ultimately, I liken it to F1. You look at these automobile companies that spend tens of millions of dollars for guys to race $2 million cars around the track. And then there's, you know, 1% of what they learn trying to build the fastest race cars in the world, you know, will spill into next year's Honda Civic. So I think that's a pretty good way for people out there to think about it.

Love it, Liam. We have what we like to do, a lightning round here at the end. It's 9 questions for 9 innings. Our suggestion is don't think about it much. Just give us, give us your knee-jerk reaction.

All right, will do. I'm ready.

All right. All right. Here we go. The speed round. First question. The best advice you could give to any young hitter?

Hit it hard and have fun.

Number 2, max speed or max power?

That's tough because speed's a function of Power. So I'm going to go with power.

You've worked with some amazing hitters. What's the one thing they all do the best?

Back-to-ball skill. Hand-eye coordination.

All right. Question number 4. What's your favorite wood bat?

Anything Marucci with the hockey puck on it. That's our counterbalance knob you see out there quite a bit in MLB right now.

Number 5. Would you rather see a double play or a home run?

Home run. Oh, man. Home run all day. All right. I should have said triple.

I should have said a triple. Triple.

Triples are cool. I'm a bad guy. Like, yeah, we're doing bad design to blow up pitch design. I want to see that thing get over the fence every time.

Uh, number 6: What's the better sport, baseball or golf?

Golf.

Sorry, you're good. You're a pro golfer, you have to say that. Number 7: How long until the MLB strike is over?

Oh, I think games start May 1st. Hate to say it.

Number 8, I don't know if you can name drop or not, but favorite hitter you've worked with?

Joey Votto.

Number 9, tell us the future of bat fitting. What's it look like 5 years from now?

It looks a lot like what we're doing, except everybody will be doing it. People will not buy a bat that's not fit.

Liam Mucklow is the founder of both Baseball Performance Lab and The Golf Lab. He's a 3-time presenter at both the World Scientific Congress of Golf and the World Golf Fitness Summit. His presentation topics have ranged from findings on human movement and equipment performance studies to technology applications for game improvement. Liam, you are, uh, you're a scholar. It's been, uh, it's been fantastic to talk to you. Thanks, uh, thanks so much for your time, Brian.

Thanks a lot for having me on. Uh, appreciate it, and keep up all the great work you guys do with Bat Digest.

And there you have it. We thought that was fantastic. We're gonna be up all night thinking about the width and the size of the grip and how that affects how much our players can change the angles of the bat. That just blows our mind. It's amazing that we haven't We've never thought of that before, but the, the bat width on the grip matters. It actually affects the swing. It's not just a preference thing. I'm telling you that. I can't stop thinking about that. That was fascinating. We'll be back on Tuesday with the mound visit. If you have a question, as always, submit it at batdigest.com/advice. Have a great weekend, folks. Peace.