CBSSports.com recently did a great feature on the Iowa and Missouri baseball programs who have taken a data approach in their program.
“What you’re seeing is just technology playing a bigger role in baseball,” said Iowa’s first-year pitching coach Desi Druschel, who had spent the previous three years as the college’s director of baseball operations. Druschel was responsible for planning the travel and the meals — boring if necessary stuff like that — but his job had a bigger scope than secretary. He leveraged his head-coaching experience at smaller programs to serve in a quality assurance role — whether it was overseeing the instruction given to players, or identifying the gadgets they should buy.
The Hawkeyes have transitioned from a non-entity to one of the best programs in the Big Ten conference since head coach Rick Heller took over in 2013. Iowa has won 30-plus games in each of Heller’s four seasons, that after winning 30 in just two of the previous 14 years. Last spring, the Hawkeyes won their first conference tournament in school history, and in August they became the first American representative to win a medal in the World University Games.
You can check out the full article by clicking here.
