We’ve already seen a baseball bat that can track and record every swing, making it an excellent training tools for working on your hitting skills. What about those looking to work on their pitch? Well, the guys behind the Strike smart baseball should have you covered.
Sporting the same size and weight (9 inches and 5 ounces) as a regulation MLB ball, it should perform the exact same way as any regular baseball. It does that while sending information about the pitch to the accompanying app in real time, which analyzes the stats to provide detailed coaching feedback.
Strike’s integrated sensors can track the ball’s three-dimensional trajectory, speed, spin rate, pitch location, and rotation axis, allowing the app to recreate the ball’s flight path afterwards as a 3D replay. It stores data on every single pitch straight to the cloud, allowing you to review them later as informative charts you can check any time you want to check on your progress. An achievement system gives you goals to clear, turning pitching practice into a game-like activity, while a coaching function provides comparisons of your pitches over time, so you can see whether any adjustments you’ve implemented are making your game better or worse.
To pair the baseball with the accompanying app, simply jerk the ball once to switch on the electronics and launch the app on your phone. Features include 12 hours of runtime on a single charge, wireless charging (so there are no ports anywhere on the ball), and enough shock-proofing to ensure the electronics can survive impact at up to 120mph.
A Kickstarter campaign is currently running for Strike. Pledges to reserve a unit starts at $99.