Building a Player Development Dashboard Using Automated Data Collection & Visualization Tools
Measure what Matters.
This is a philosophy I’ve long believed in but fully adopted in the reflection period after my 2022 baseball season. For the first time in my collegiate career I eclipsed the 20 inning mark — taking the ball for 75 innings over a five month stretch. In that year, I was able to have a career year on the mound & make every start. Regardless of how successful I deemed the season to be, I believed there was another level I could reach.
Through the reflection period, the main weakness I identified was that my inability to be fully healthy down the stretch hindered my ability to perform to what I was truly capable of. As the season moved along I felt as if I wasn’t at or even close to my peak performance state.
So moving forward, in order to maximize my career — I needed to create a training philosophy that lent itself to maximization. All while cultivating an attention to detail that also aided me in being at my best when it mattered the most. So what was the solution?
Measure what matters.
Measuring what mattered lead me to invest in two tools I now use everyday to monitor my performance — a Whoop Band & a Driveline Pulse Sensor.
The Whoop Band measures a number of things — mostly centered around heart rate and uses that data to give day scores for both recovery and strain. Both of which are plenty useful. Although, the lowest hanging fruit I sought after for improving my performance was the Whoop’s sleep tracker. Each night the band tracks your sleep and provides down to the minute data of how much total sleep you had, how much of it was restorative sleep and also the amount of REM sleep you were able to achieve that night.
Much has been made of the benefits of sleep & proper rest on performance and rightfully so. This made the Whoop and it’s data incredibly valuable to my dashboard.
The second investment was a Driveline Pulse Sensor. Pulse is a wearable sensor that monitors arm speed, elbow torque & arm angle. The sensor uses each of those coupled with amount of throws and the amount of high effort throws to deliver a daily workload score to monitor the amount of stress on the arm each day.
The sensor aids in being able to take the guess work out of throwing and how much stress is truly being placed on the arm. Often pitchers get lost in a catch-play session whilst working on something or searching for a feel and the arm tends to suffer. This was certainly something I fell victim to during the season and the Driveline Pulse Sensor was a no-brainer decision to hold myself accountable and ensure arm health to create some longevity.
Data Collection & Automation
With this data now being tracked, I needed a way to collect the data and derive actionable insights from it. Creating a database was the obvious solution — but I knew there had to be a way to automate the process and draw insights at a faster rate.
To make that a reality — I turned to Jotform, where I built a data collection form for both the Whoop & Pulse to be filled out every single day.
In addition to the Jotform — I used Zapier, an automation application that alerts anytime a new submission is submitted through Jotform. When alerted, the new submission would automatically populate in my google sheet database as a new row and the subsequent charts & tables would also be updated as a result.
To expedite this process I’ve bookmarked both forms to my home screen for easy access each day. At any time I’m one click away from accessing my forms.
DRIVING INSIGHTS — DATA THAT MATTERS
With the data collected the next logical was to create modes to draw insight from. To create my charts and tables, I needed to decipher what of the data was most relevant. And this is where I landed.
(Note: All data at the time of construction & in screenshots was fabricated sample data. Personalized data has been and will be used moving forward.)
Whoop Statistics
The tables & graphs embedded within the dash are mostly self-explanatory upon a glance. Most of them are rolling graphs given a timeframe and a performance indicator. When drawing insights in this nature, simplicity wins out.
Within the Whoop section you’ll find graphs concerning recovery score, day strain, calories & weight. But the crown jewel and motivating factor behind the whoop investment was the sleep data. Which led to the stacked column chart identifying restorative and total sleep on a day-by-day basis. This will be one of the first things I’ll look to when studying performance which made it paramount in the creation of the dash.
Pulse Statistics
The motivating factor behind investing in the Pulse was to monitor the amount of throws and the workload placed on my arm on a day-by-day basis. This section of the dash accomplishes just that. One graph tracks the amount of throws per day along with high-effort throws to ensure I have an eye on the amount of throws my arm takes on. An additional graph tracks workload on a day-by-day basis and illuminates just how stressful the throws and high effort throws were. The final visual is a another simple rolling graph that tracks arm score.
Arm score is an value created by the user on how the arm “feels” that given. A score of 1 would suggest the arm is extremely fatigued or in pain, while a score of 10 would suggest the arm feels nearly perfect.
This serves as a great resource to be able to look back on past data to identify what pattern of throwing and workloads lead to positive arm scores. This is increasingly beneficial in building a plan on a weekly basis to ensure on competition day I’m as close to the best version of myself as possible.
Pitch Metrics
You’ll also find a section concerning pitch metrics & statistics within the dash. Although this data collection followed a separate process, it’s a piece of the performance dashboard I determined was necessary.
The Whoop & Pulse sections of the dash serve as an aid to increase performance which ideally presents itself within the pitch metric data. This was a way to track that pitch data and it’s tracking will evolve as the dashboard evolves. I’ll expand more on where I see the dash moving in the future iterations component of this piece.
Filtering
One the non-negotiable factors in creating the dashboard was having the ability to filter for timeframes. Each section has a date filter that can be used independently of the other sections and can be customized for any stretch of days. This was paramount because of the aforementioned ability to look into the past and study when things felt “right.” With this data I could understand what patterns led to those feelings and that success.
Success often leaves clues.
Future Iterations
As we move into the winter months which are primarily focused on development this seemed like the perfect time to implement the dashboard. The dashboard will certainly be tweaked as this is only the first version. As we move closer to the season I will begin to include in-season pitch data and results in the form of pitch performance by location, count, sequencing & more. I will share the changes to the dash as this project evolves.
On a personal scale, I think the benefits of this dashboard could be immense — but I believe it hold even more value on a larger scale.
Something of this nature could be increasingly valuable to a team or a group of pitchers on a team scale. The data collection process would require some tweaks but only in the way of adding a name or player portion to the forms being collected. This would allow the filters to filter by player name and that players data would populate separate from any other player.
This would be ideal for player management personnel searching for a way to monitor a staff. Given they have access to data from Pulse & Whoop. What I’ve constructed here would be a great no-cost way to keep an eye on player performance.
Conclusion
While searching for an avenue to take my career to the next level & the pursuit of leaving no stone unturned — investing in the Pulse and Whoop products were no-brainers. Even with the tools in hand, I needed to find a way to squeeze every bit of valuable information out of them. The creation of this dashboard accomplishes just that.
It will take diligent data collection and constant tweaking to ensure the insights are as relevant as possible but I’m excited about the prospect of what this dashboard will provide for me moving forward. This is all in the name of…
MEASURING WHAT MATTERS
