By John Portch

The lack of useful data in women’s sport is an enduring problem, but the England & Wales Cricket Board hope its Insight 360 project will be a game-changer.

Insight 360 is a data-driven approach to performance management and athlete monitoring. It was launched in February 2024 by the ECB in collaboration with Ascent, their digital services provider, and includes an app for players (to view their data), a dashboard for practitioners (to view data across the board), and a portal that practitioners can use to input data.

“When you see the little research that’s out there, you’ve not got much to hang your hat on,” said Anna Warren, the Head of England Women’s Science & Medicine, at November’s Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London. “We’re using this platform to better understand in depth the female cricketer; what they look like from the academy through to the international cricketer.”

The rollout has been a success and, as the ECB launches phase two (the wider introduction of injury data and more sophisticated use of match data), we highlight the factors that led to its sport-wide take up.

It reflects the concerns of players

Insight 360, as the name suggests, represents a holistic approach to collating athlete data. There is a focus on availability and performance, but there is also a focus their health, home life, and career progression. “Players come to us and discuss their issues quite openly,” said Dr Tham Wedatilake, the Lead Physician for England Women’s Cricket, who joined Warren onstage to discuss the project. “They want to perform without any barriers.”

It is a co-designed platform

Ahead of the launch, the ECB gathered input from practitioners and coaches across the English game. “This means Insight 360 is bespoke for women’s cricket,” said Warren.  Players, she said, are happy with an app that allows them to review their own data in as much detail as they like. “This is good for player buy-in, which is always a challenge in relation to athlete monitoring.”

There is also the power of a co-designed project. UK Sports Institute have found as much with their Project Minerva. Dr Richard Burden, the UKSI’s Co-Head of Female Athlete Health & Performance, said: “Get the practitioners involved, get athletes, get the teams and bring them along with it because if they’re onboard you get easier access to them and you’re going to produce something that’s more translatable, meaningful and applicable to them.”

Warren is on the same page with Insight 360. “You can link loads of different data sources together and start to answer some key performance questions – we’re not looking at everything in isolation.”

It provides a single source of truth

Collaboration can be easier said than done. “When you have so many people pull data together it becomes almost impossible for the human brain to comprehend and then deliver effective, unbiased solutions to players’ needs and expectations,” said Wedatilake.

Insight 360 is the single reference point and it provides continuity. “As soon as one person leaves and another is working with the players, that record gets lost,” said Warren. “We’re really trying to create a joined-up system.”

It is future-proof

Wedatilake explained that Insight 360, as part of its next phase, will include injury data. He said: “It will be a game-changer for us in terms of load and injury risk and other factors such as the menstrual cycle and wellness.” The platform is primed to integrate future sources of data.

He does, however, also temper his excitement with a note of caution. “We didn’t want to get greedy too early,” he added. It was critical to have the right structure and means of integration before adding different elements, whether they are rooted in stats or video.

One of the next steps is further automation, particularly with regards to match data. “That’s the beauty of this system,” said Warren. “It’s so much quicker for people.”

She and Wedatilake wrapped up their presentation by setting out their ambitions for Insight 360:

Main image: Pison

By Rob Schaefer

Pison, maker of AI-powered neural sensors that measure cognitive functions through smart wristbands, is today unveiling a baseball product called Pison Baseball Pro.

Priced annually at $359 per player, the package comes with the same hardware and ENG technology as the company’s Pison Perform product – which encompasses sleep tracking in addition to cognitive assessments – plus access to an online data visualization dashboard and Pison Baseball Pro app with drills specific to the sport.

“As far as this game goes, it’s been known to be 90% mental, but how often do we train the mental part of the game?” said Marc Deschenes, Pison’s VP/Sports Operations and a former professional pitcher. “Us being able to use that information and integrating that into player development for performance and awareness on the baseball field is integral in making this game more complete for our players.”

Pison’s sensors detect electrical signals that emanate from the brain, pass through the nervous system and manifest in muscle movements. Its breakthrough is in coining what it calls ENG (electroneurography), which measures electrical signals in a way that would typically require complex lab testing via a chip pressed to the surface of the skin.

The roots of the company’s technology are in treating degenerative brain illnesses such as ALS, but it broke into sports about one year ago with an eye on performance and evaluation use-cases. Pison’s sensors measure cognitive functions such as reaction time, mental agility and focus through light-based reaction tests that range from 20 seconds to three minutes.

Image: Pison

Pison has public partnerships with the baseball programs at Penn State, Oral Roberts, West Virginia (including use by 2024 No. 7 overall MLB draft pick of the St. Louis Cardinals JJ Wetherholt), and Lansing Community College, which Deschenes calls a “power user” because of feedback they have provided. At the youth level, Pison works with USA Prime New England (which Deschenes owns) and Fort Worth Christian Academy for baseball, as well as the Boston Hockey Academy.

Multiple MLB teams are also evaluating the technology, and the league itself is in the process of testing it for on-field approval.

The new product was formally announced at the American Baseball Coaches Association conference in Washington D.C. this morning. In the future, Pison will look to expand to other sports and potentially integrate its sensors into existing wearable vendors.

“The product, really, is taking a sophisticated technology that has been in the medical world – and kind of out of reach even there because of the cost – and bringing it down to something that everybody can use,” said John Joseph, Pison’s CRO. “When we look at the market, we aren’t just going after the MLB market or college. This is really for anybody that wants to develop that elite mental game.”

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

Main image: ATP Tour

By Rob Schaefer

The ATP Tour’s player- and coach-facing analytics platform, Tennis IQ, began integrating automatically-tagged video clips ahead of its year-end finals in Turin in November and at December’s Next Gen Finals in Jeddah.

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

By Joe Lemire

You can’t have a discussion about sports technology today without including athletes in that conversation. Their partnerships, investments and endorsements help fuel the space – they have emerged as major stakeholders in the sports tech ecosystem. The Athlete’s Voice series highlights the athletes leading the way and the projects and products they’re putting their influence behind.

* * * * *

Olympic medal-winning gymnast Samantha Peszek, who now broadcasts for ESPN and NBC Sports, recently drew upon her careers as an athlete and analyst to speak with SBJ about technological advances in how gymnastics is scored. The Judging Support System, an AI-powered technology developed by Fujitsu, tracks gymnasts’ motion in 3D. It is used as a resource available to officials and was first deployed on every apparatus at the 2023 world championships in Antwerp, Belgium. Peszek, 33, is known as the Beam Queen for her prowess in the event.

On gymnastics judging…

I’ve seen it both ways. I’ve been the recipient of things going my way and getting the benefit of the doubt, and I’ve definitely been on the other side of it where I was really frustrated re-watching my routine, especially in college, and thinking that I should have gotten a higher score than I got. As much as you can get frustrated and complain, at the end of the day, that’s the sport of gymnastics. It’s a subjective sport, and so those are the rules that you play by, and you’ve done that since you’ve been a little kid.

You pick up different tricks along the way to maybe sell your routine to the judges a little bit more or [make] more eye contact to make them feel like you have more artistry. There are little like tricks to the trade — sliding your feet together to make it look like you stuck — so I always tell the girls that I coach at my event, Beam Queen Boot Camp, that it’s a sport about perfection, but it’s not about perfection. It’s about the illusion of perfection.

On the potential of AI in the sport…

The idea of AI having a play in gymnastics excites me because it’s helping a subjective sport transition to a more objective sport. The biggest area that I see for improvement is in the judging. Not only would I think it makes scoring more accurate, but it would also speed up the process.

Something a lot of people don’t think about is, when an athlete competes one event, they have to wait not only for everybody else to compete on their event but they’re changing to the next event [to get their score]. So that time that you’re getting cold in between events is pretty significant. You’re trained to learn how to do that at a young age, but there’s not really a practice for taking a turn and competing, doing one routine and then just waiting for 20 minutes, especially at higher levels. So that’s why oftentimes you see gymnasts jumping around and staying warm.

If AI can help the efficiency of generating more accurate scoring, I think that would be a huge positive for the sport, especially when it comes to out of bounds on floor, which we saw came into a really big play at this past Olympics. How crooked they are on the mats? [How is their] form, technique? Did they take a step on the landing?

Photo: Samantha Peszek

On the limits of AI…

When you think about implementing that, the way I see it is you would have to add a judging panel for the artistry because my fear is that if you make it as objective as it possibly can, then you take away the beauty and the artistry, creativity and just the overall integrity of the sport. So you would have to do still do a combination because I think it would be really hard for AI to judge the artistry as well as the objective components of a routine.

On how such a dramatic change could be implemented…

I think lots of trial and error. They would need to present it to the committees and get a buy in from a majority of countries that participate in gymnastics. Another aspect that I think some other countries would probably ask is, is it going to be accessible for everybody, or is it just going to be the bigger countries that can afford to implement AI in all of their sporting events? And I know America in particular really values sports, but other countries don’t put the same emphasis and priority on sports as we do.

Photo: Samantha Peszek

On the training tech she’d like to see in gymnastics…

If there was some sort of tracking information on an athlete’s body that could tell a coach, Hey, she’s normally at this number, but today she’s operating — her energy level or her stamina or what have you — is actually lower than the average, then a coach can adjust the numbers. Maybe other athletes and other sports do this a little bit better because they’re older, but in gymnastics, most of the gymnasts are under 20 years old, and so, one, they don’t want to look like they’re not working hard, so they have a hard time speaking up, I think. And then, two, they haven’t lived with their body long enough to know, is this just soreness, or is it an injury?

I just know, from my own experience, other athletes I would see wouldn’t speak up, and then they would end up getting injured because they were pushing themselves when they probably should have been pulling back. So I think AI could really help injury prevention in that way, just more data to show coaches, ‘Hey, just FYI, she’s not operating at full capacity today. Take that information as you will.’

On becoming a beam specialist…

It was my least favorite [apparatus]. I used to pray to God growing up in bed, ‘If you love me at all, please let beam not be an event in gymnastics because I had so many fears on the event.’ I think, because I had so much trouble on that event in particular growing up, it forced me to home in on my mindset at a young age, figuring out how to be mentally tough. As much of a bear as it was, and a burden for me to go through all those challenges as a young gymnast, I think it actually benefited me in the long run because I had to visualize, and I had to goal set, and I had to do positive self-talk.

The majority of gymnastics, and specifically on beam, is all about the power of the mind and the confidence that you have on beam. And so for me to have to go through that and come out on the better on the other side of it, I forced myself to become mentally strong at a young age, and it became my secret weapon as I got older through the sport. So I wish I could go back and tell my younger self that it was all worth it because I almost actually quit gymnastics because of how many obstacles I had on the event.

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

By John Portch

Muhammad Ali famously rope-a-doped George Foreman during their ‘Rumble in the Jungle’ world heavyweight title fight in Zaïre in 1974.

It’s easy to say that, as a battle-weary 32-year-old facing a younger, stronger champion, Ali had little choice when selecting his approach.

Foreman had won 37 of his 40 fights by way of knockout and was confident of adding No 38 to his unbeaten record in the early hours of 30 October at Kinshasa’s packed Stade du Mai 20.

Yet Ali later said his decision to stay on the ropes and allow Foreman to tire, which set him up to secure an eighth-round knockout, was made on the fly. He backed himself to absorb Foreman’s punishing body blows and wait for his moment. Foreman had only been taken to eight rounds four times previously in his career, so there were question marks over his stamina. The longer Ali could last – easier said than done – the greater his chances.

“I didn’t really plan what happened that night,” said Ali in 1989. “But when a fighter gets in the ring, he has to adjust to the conditions he faces.”

That Foreman could be lured into rope-a-dope was at least deemed possible by Ali’s coach, Angelo Dundee, who was seen loosening the ropes (to make leaning back easier) prior to the fighters’ ring walks. But that’s another story.

Ali’s defensive tactics, particularly during the fight’s final rounds, chimed with John Bull, the Director & Lead for High Performance Research at Management Futures (and big Ali fan), as he told an audience at the 2023 Leaders Sport Performance Summit in London.

Of his hero, Bull explained that a wave of fear came over Ali “for the first time in his career” as he sat in his corner at the end of the first round.

“Ali was really scared; and then 20 seconds later said to himself ‘I’m going to need to outthink this guy’,” Bull said.

Outthink Foreman Ali did; and Bull argued that such adaptability could be commonplace in sport with the right approach.

“I do believe some people are more naturally creative, but there are ways and structures that help anyone become more creative,” he continued while likening the process to strengthening muscles.

“What I love about these techniques is you can learn them really quickly. Practise any of these techniques for more than 15 minutes and you will be better than most people.”

These are the techniques Bull shared with the audience.

The STOP process for creative problem-solving

“I love STOP,” said Bull. “It’s a really simple way to get people thinking about ‘how are we doing that?’ How often do we take the STOP moments during a game, during the season etc. It’s a quick, short use of time.”

Bull then presented five strategies for encouraging athletes to adapt to the challenges or opponents facing them.

1. Redefine or reframe the problem with alternative goals

If you can find new ways to consider your problems, it can open up new ways of thinking.

Bull used the example of an elevator. Perhaps your goal is to make the elevator go faster, but what if your aim was to make the wait less annoying?

“Most hotels will put a mirror beside the elevator,” he said. “That seems to kill time when we’re looking at ourselves in a mirror.”

Bull suggested we “think of at least three different ways we could define our goal, to help open up new ways of thinking about the problem”.

2. Mind mapping

If you can map the different categories of possible solutions it can prevent you narrowing in on just one type of solution.

Bull asked members of the audience to take a pen and piece of paper and write down as many sports as they could think of in one minute.

He then proposed a rerun of the exercise where the paper includes sub-categories such as ‘team’, ‘individual’ or ‘in or on water’. It might look like this:

“What mind mapping is very good at doing is getting us to think more broadly,” said Bull. “What we tend to do when we’re being creative is we’ll come up with one or two ideas quickly as you would have been doing there, but then we tend to stay in that same vein of thought. So if I come at this using mind mapping, the first question you ask yourself mind mapping is not what sports can I think of, but what categories. Once you come up with a category, the brain very quickly accesses four to seven ideas.”

3. Step change thinking

Step change thinking is the idea of setting a very stretching goal and then thinking how that could be possible.

Bull posed two questions:

• What would be a ‘step change’ goal you could set yourself?
• Assuming it is possible, ask yourself ‘what would we need to do to achieve this?’

He shared the following example:

To underline his point, Bull explained that step change goals are common at Google where employees often set – and meet – seemingly impossible goals. “They’ll take any performance measure they want to get creative with and they’ll say ‘times it by ten’ and ask ‘how would we do that at a ridiculous level?’ just to provoke creative approaches.”

4. Ideal world

This notion is straightforward enough:

• Describe your absolute ideal outcome
• Then ask yourself under what circumstances you would get this?

Bull cited the real-world example of paramedics in England. Providers of ambulatory care would like to reach people who suffer heart attacks within eight minutes, which is impossible by road in areas such as rural Norfolk in East Anglia. “You ask ‘how could we make that happen?’ And the answer that came up was you could train someone in every community to be able to keep someone alive until the first-responders arrive.”

Sport is not life and death, but a similar thought process could prove useful.

5. Related world

Who has already solved your problem and what can you learn from them?

In answering this question, New Zealand rugby, as Bull explained, turned to ballet for help with its lineout lifting.

“Rugby’s been doing this for 25 years in terms of assisted lineouts. Ballet’s been doing this for a few hundred years – they probably know a little bit more about it, so it’s that idea of going outside.”

Photo: Lasso Safe

By Joe Lemire

Lasso Safe, makers of AI-powered software to help protect athlete wellness, has partnered with Players Health to help sports organizations assess risk and better care for its members.

Founded by a pair of retired professional athletes — endurance cyclist Pamela Minix and figure skater Luis Hernández — Lasso Safe has developed an evidence-based, research-validated survey and software to detect potentially toxic environments and unsafe relationships.

Players Health, a sports insurance group that recently raised a $60 million Series C round, will use it to “create safer, more supportive environments that lead to both healthier athletes and more sustainable businesses,” said Kyle Lubrano, Chief Mission Delivery Officer of Players Health.

Minix said Lasso Safe completed validation of its most updated product in October and described it as “a machine learning software that recognizes athletes’ experiences — specifically the areas are mental, emotional, physical and social wellbeing. We recognize them on spectrum from healthy, happy experiences to harmful and even abusive experiences.”

Lasso Safe described the product as “a machine learning software that recognizes athletes’ experiences — specifically the areas are mental, emotional, physical and social wellbeing.” Image: Lasso Safe

It was originally developed for national governing bodies that serve Olympic sports but has been modified for age groups as young as elementary school. Minix noted the increasing pressures at the youth level, in part because of growing expectations from the coaches and the growing financial investment in the space.

“Any level can experience this, not just highly competitive levels, so we focus on youth, but we do all age groups,” Minix said. “The software is designed to recognize even the first step away from that, when maybe those pressures start to come up or any type of misconduct within those wellness pillars.”

The frequency of surveys is at the discretion of each organization. Minix noted that Players Health will typically require them at least once during an application process to the platform, but many groups will administer them periodically or after incidents.

Questions asked of athletes include whether they feel valued by the coach, whether they have adequate access to nutrition and hydration during training sessions and more. Surveys can take anywhere from five to 15 minutes to complete.

Minix said Lasso Safe has run pilots with about 50 universities in the past five years, led by Utah State and Victoria University in Australia. The first adopter of the latest software is Globocol, a case management company based in the UK that offers services for sporting integrity, DEI, health and safety and data governance, among other uses.

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

By Joe Lemire

You can’t have a discussion about sports technology today without including athletes in that conversation. Their partnerships, investments and endorsements help fuel the space – they have emerged as major stakeholders in the sports tech ecosystem. The Athlete’s Voice series highlights the athletes leading the way and the projects and products they’re putting their influence behind.

* * * * *

Amanda Serrano is arguably the greatest champion in women’s boxing history, with a 47-3-1 career record and world championships in seven divisions. She was the first male or female fighter from Puerto Rico to be an undisputed champ.

Two of her losses included the tightly fought split decision against Katie Taylor that headlined Madison Square Garden two years ago. Their rematch last month, which Taylor won by a controversial unanimous decision, was as the co-headliner with Jake Paul and Mike Tyson in the Most Valuable Promotions card was held at AT&T Stadium in Texas and streaming live on Netflix.

Also in November, Serrano, 36, partnered with Total Wireless, a no-contract 5G provider that runs on the Verizon network — and received her very first mobile phone. Citing an unwavering, distraction-free focus on boxing, Serrano had resisted owning a phone until now. She will host a meet-and-greet with fans at a Total Wireless store in Brooklyn on Dec. 1.

On not owning a mobile phone…

No, never. It’s going to be my first one. All my communication has been through my trainer, my brother-in-law, which is Jordan Maldonado, and every now and then, I’ll steal my sister’s phone and do everything there. I do have an iPad, but this would be my first phone.

On who she’ll call or text first…

I think it’s going to be my sister, and I’m going to talk. She will be happy that I don’t take her phone anymore. Now I have my own.

On working with Total Wireless…

Total Wireless definitely has a good commitment with the Latino companies, Latino athletes. What really got me was because their plans, and then they’re associated with Verizon. I needed a plan and something that’s not going to slow me down. Because I’m always high pace, and I needed something that’s going to do that for me.

On how she evaluates brand partnerships…

If I truly believe in it, if I’m happy with them, if I see their work and what they’ve done for others, and what they’re doing for in general — yeah, that’s how we partner up. If I believe in it wholeheartedly, then I’m going to go with them. There’s people that we’ve gotten offers from, and I said I don’t agree with what they’re doing, or I don’t get what they their motives are. So I will not represent them.

On being on co-headlining with Jake Paul and Mike Tyson…

Obviously the fans wanted this fight. I believe I won the first fight. So it was really easy when my team came up to me and said, ’It’s going to be on Netflix in a big stadium for 80,000.’ I said, ‘Let’s do it.’ We gave an iconic first fight, headlining Madison Square Garden, selling it out. And I think we’re just going to do a better fight this time. And I think we’re both deserving of this platform to go out there and represent for the women in the sport.

It’s truly an honor. I’m super proud. I have an amazing team that even thought of me to put this fight on. I can’t wait. I know I’m going to put on a show. I’m ready. I know Katie’s ready. And you’re going to witness women’s boxing at its finest.

On her training methods…

I’m old school. I have an old school trainer. We’ve been doing it for 16 years this way. It’s been working for me for 16 years. I’m one of the most accomplished female fighters in the world, and that’s only [after] having nine amateur fights. I have 50 pro fights. And if it ain’t broke, why fix it? But we definitely train smarter this camp. I train hard for all my fights. So I’d be lying if I you that I trained harder. No, we just trained smarter. I’m ready to become undisputed champion at 140.

 

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A post shared by Amanda Serrano (@serranosisters)

On how she’s evolved…

I never really, in the beginning of my career, thought of recovery as part of training, but that was definitely a plus for this fight. As you get older, your body gets a little more wear and tear, so you definitely have to concentrate on that and just eating good and just going out there and performing, making sure you’re training hard and running the miles you have to run, putting in the work, and you’ll do good at fight time.

On her team…

My team is very small. It has been my brother-in-law [who is] my manager and my trainer, which is Jordan Maldonado; and my sister [Cindy]. We’ve been together. It’s been us three. I do have a pad coach, but he does what my main coach, Jordan, tells him to do. I had a nutritionist, and I learned things from him. So I moved it over to this fight. I try and cook for myself, but I’m I don’t like too much. I don’t like an entourage. I don’t like too many people around me. So it’s been my small team, and I’m happy. They just bring the best out of me.

On what she learned about fighting Katie Taylor…

Katie is definitely a warrior. She’s tough as they come. She’s not going to go down easily, and she’s going to fight every minute, every round, and that’s what I I learned. I gained more confidence after that first fight. I know I hurt her. I’m capable of hurting her again this fight. And that’s what we’re going to try to do.

On the growth of women’s boxing…

It’s been a long journey. Definitely people had their doubts in us, but now that they’ve seen that champions are fighting champions, we’re putting in on great shows — I’m not the type to brag, but when I do express how much money I’m making in my fights, that’s to motivate these young girls and show them, inspire them. There’s a light at the end of the tunnel, like ‘I can make this type of money if I continue to fight, work hard.’ Now, with this type of money, women are coming into the sport more. They’re putting on shows. They’re fighting, they’re getting in shape, and we have amazing talent, amazing champions, and I think it’s only getting better.

This article was brought to you by SBJ Tech, a Leaders Group company. As a Leaders Performance Institute member, you are able to enjoy exclusive access to SBJ Tech content in the field of athletic performance.

A podcast brought to you by our Main Partners

Lachlan Penfold’s time at the Golden State Warriors was eye-opening in numerous ways.

Chief amongst them was his realisation that joy is crucial in a high performance environment.

“Joy in a professional sport? That’s a bit strange,” thought Penfold, but it was one of the team’s trademarks and no-one embodied it better than their Head Coach Steve Kerr and illustrious point guard Steph Curry.

“The player that embodies it better than anyone in world sport is Steph Curry in terms of just the absolute joy he gets from playing the game, from training the game,” Penfold continues, “not only from his perspective, but from seeing his teammates have success and do great things, the joy that he gets really invigorates a sporting team.”

It has fed into his work with the Melbourne Storm, who reached the NRL grand final in October. No doubt they’ll go again in 2025, inspired by the family environment described so vividly by Penfold [10:00].

We also spoke about his approach to training and recovery [17:30] and the importance of individualised work [22:30]. Last up, we discussed the year ahead [28:10].

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.

Main photo courtesy of the University of Pennsylvania

By Joe Lemire

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania have completed the first study demonstrating that the special mud Major League Baseball uses to rub all of its game balls does, in fact, enhance friction and ensure pitchers have a consistent grip.

While questions remain about the compositional qualities of the South Jersey mud that create this effect, the new paper published today in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences concludes that the Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud — harvested by the Bintliff family for generations — spreads like skin cream and grips like sandpaper.

“The non-complicated headline, is that, in general, the friction is enhanced with the mud on the ball,” said Douglas Jerolmack, a Penn professor of engineering and environmental sciences, who said the combination was “kind of magical” how it spreads smoothly and still has grit. “The thing, though, that makes it delicate and complicated is that the sliding speed matters.”

The lead author of the paper is Shravan Pradeep, a postdoctoral researcher working in Jerolmack’s lab. He worked closely with a student, Xiangyu Chen, to design the experiments. Jerolmack and Paulo Arratia, a professor of chemical and biomolecular engineering, supervised the work.

Photo: University of Pennsylvania

Much of their recent, grant-funded work studies the behavior of natural mud in debris flows — “catastrophic landslides,” as Jerolmack put it — but the baseball mud became a passion project after learning of its existence when approached by a journalist for comment in 2019.

The Bintliff’s mud is a quirky but essential part of baseball lore and logistics. It used to prepare every baseball to ensure the proper tack and feel of the ball. MLB has previously contracted with material science giant Dow to create pre-tacked baseballs, which were tried in the minor leagues but didn’t behave the way a traditional baseball does.

Mud procured by the Bintliffs is found along the Delaware River and is unique, even if it initially looks and feels the same, with Pradeep explaining, “When you try to spread it between your fingers, it looked and it felt like a face cream, like these clay masks we have you put on the face.”

“It allows you to spread a very thin and fairly uniform coating because it spreads so well,” Jerolmack added. “It makes this exquisitely thin layer.”

Based on published reports, the Bintliffs do treat the mud some, draining some water out to a certain consistency, sieving it to remove a particular fraction of larger particles and putting in a secret additive. The Penn researchers did some compositional analysis that identified the concentration of elements but not how they are combined. An area for further research is to examine the biological materials. They did note the product included “little bits of twigs and leaves and stuff because it’s actually natural mud from a real creek,” Jerolmack said.

“It behaves like a material that’s been optimized to do this,” he added. “They must have a very good working knowledge of this mud. . . . It appears that the ingredients don’t seem special, but the proportions of these ingredients are dialed in perfectly to make it have this behavior.”

The first of three tests conducted by Penn was the use of a rheometer, which measured its viscosity and found that it behaved similar to commercial skin creams. The second involved an atomic force microscope, which is essential a pin prick that measures the resisting force needed to pull the needle away — it assesses the stickiness of the substance, which Pradeep saying the Lena Blackburne mud-rubbed baseball was twice as sticky as an untreated ball.

The third test was the novel one involving the creation of artificial fingers for consistent force application. Pradeep and Chen used a silicone polymer called PDMS that has the same elasticity as human skin. They then added squalene, a fish oil that replicates what’s naturally found on fingertips. The scientists applied pressure on the baseball with these fingers and then created a shearing force by sliding the ball at various velocities.

Photo: University of Pennsylvania

What they found was that the mud created only a small amount of friction at slow sliding speeds and that the friction disappears at very fast speeds, presumably because the small sand particles in the mud are knocked off the ball’s cover. But, in the Goldilocks zone in between the extreme speeds, the friction is notably enhanced by the mud.

“Over the past decade, we have worked with many types of cohesive mud, frictional mud, different type of muds that are out there,” Arratia said, “and in our experience, none of them has those properties that we saw with this particular mud.”

The researchers bought the mud and the baseballs on the internet and were not in touch with the Bintliffs to avoid any conflict of interest. They were just keenly interested in how the mud works more than any business implication of how their findings might affect the family business or the progress of a chemically enhanced, tacky ball.

But Jerolmack said his team ultimately did develop a stance — which was to endorse the continuation of the Lena Blackburne Baseball Rubbing Mud.

“It seems like the consistency of this mud has been more consistent than any other aspect of the manufacturing of these balls,” he said. “And our take now is that it’s 2024 and there’s a lot of people in material science and chemistry and other industries that are looking for sustainable and green solutions to replace synthetic and petroleum-based things. And here is a baseball tradition that is a material sustainably harvested, that’s replenished with the tides and takes very little of it to have this desired effect, and it’s a consistency for the pitchers — and I’m like, why would you try to change this?”

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Kitman Labs ensured Bayer Leverkusen knew what it took to win the German Bundesliga.

They demonstrated to Dr Karl-Heinrich Dittmar, Leverkusen’s Head of Medical, the optimal range of player availability to top the table during a meet in Dublin, four or five years before Die Werkself actually won the title.

“I kept this data; and last year we did it,” Dr Dittmar told the Kitman Labs podcast with evident pride. It turns out the data scanned almost perfectly across the numbers posted by the club during their unbeaten title-winning campaign.

“They found out what we need from the medical point of view, from player availability, and it was perfect – the data predicted what would happen in the future.”

It demonstrated the value of clean, consistent datasets – something that has given Leverkusen an edge over more celebrated rivals – and something that Yael Averbuch West is trying to build in her role as GM at 2023 NWSL champions Gotham City.

“We’re still in the data collection stage in the women’s game,” she tells the podcast, while also explaining that the work to bridge that gap is well underway in this corner of New York City.

In the third and final episode of this series, West and Dr Dittmar are joined by Kitman Labs Founder Stephen Smith to discuss how data strategies can help teams in their quest for greatness.

Elsewhere, the trio discuss a range of topics, including why learnings tend to emerge as data collection grows ever more sophisticated [17:30]; the importance of a centralised system for consistency [24:15]; the balance between using data to unearth ‘hidden gems’ and jumping on something misleading [33:00].

Episode one is available here and episode two is available here.

Further listening:

Kitman Labs Podcast: ‘Women Players Need to Feel Safe and they Need to Have Access to Support’

Listen above and subscribe today on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher and Overcast, or your chosen podcast platform.