Data & Analytics in Player Development & Recruiting, with Chris Gordon (Duke Baseball Assistant Coach)
March 26, 2020
We recorded the conversation above on Thursday, March 26 with Chris Gordon, Assistant Baseball Coach at Duke University.
Coach Gordon’s bio on the Duke Athletics website describes his role, in which he “assists with the recruiting process and on-campus visits, facilitates the team’s statistics and analytics technology, and coordinates all Duke baseball camps.” Within a program at the forefront of college baseball in using the data and analytical tools in their player development and recruiting, Coach Gordon works closely with collecting, analyzing and leveraging this data in the team’s efforts – and offers incredible insights for young student-athletes.
The conversation covers some broad ground in the state of data and analytics in college baseball and softball – including how it is used in player development, how valuable it is in recruiting and assessing prospective student-athletes and how players can think about and use data in the development of their own game.
In addition to the full video above, below area few key takeaways for student-athletes and families.
Key Takeaways:
Data by itself doesn’t deliver the results in your development – you as a student-athlete also need to educate yourself not only about what the data means, but which pieces are most important to you, and impact your on-field success the most. Doing this will take self-education and a longitudinal look at your data and development – be patient, and use all the resources that are available to best help yourself.
Also please note: while Coach Gordon is talking specifically about the data that they use as a baseball program, the same or analogous data is available on the same or parallel platforms for softball, as well. And in softball player development and recruiting, this data plays a similarly important role for college coaches.
Analytics and data can give coaches more in-depth insights into who you are as a player and allow them to recruit your unique strengths. Using data – and educating yourself – to discover what it is that makes you unique as a player, and what your particular strengths are can help you highlight this for coaches, as well.
Given the potential for a truncated recruiting window this summer due to COVID-19, getting access to data stands to be even more important for coaches – and therefore for prospective student-athletes – to help them more quickly get a complete picture of a player they’re recruiting.
