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Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
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Know Hitters

ustin Goltz gets into position to hit a baseball perched on a stand in front of him. A knot of bystanders feels the powerful whap of wood hitting leather as the ball sinks deep into a net.

Statistics about Goltz’s hit appear on a television monitor mounted above them, in a hitting cage in a Carlsbad industrial building. Goltz’s bat carries a sensor package about the size of a stack of quarters attached to the bat’s knob, just below the place where he grips it. In a split second, the electronics sense the speed of the swing and other parameters, and then beam it to a software app.

Blast Motion — the company hosting the demonstration — makes both the hardware and the software.

The algorithm calculates that the time from the start of Goltz’s swing to contact with the ball is 0.40 seconds. It’s a start.

“I want to be at point-two tomorrow,” says Goltz, Blast Motion’s channel manager for baseball.

Michael Fitzpatrick, who runs the place, looks on with approval. Fitzpatrick is the CEO, investor and co-founder of Blast Motion.

The 6-year-old Carlsbad company is bringing its hardware-software combination to playing fields everywhere, targeting not just the baseball market, but golf and basketball as well. In fact, Blast is for anyone who wants to know more about their swings — or in the case of basketball, their dunks. The sensor detects jump height, rotation and hang time.

Blast Motion interweaves the statistics with video of the shot.

The system sells for $150.

Shortly before the All-Star Game in July, Blast Motion announced that its product was the official bat sensor of Major League Baseball. MLB sells it on its e-commerce site. Terms of its multiple-year deal were not disclosed.

Fan Engagement

Fitzpatrick said the technology can make sports more fun — particularly for a new generation that is accustomed to the statistics generated by videogames. Baseball is looking for ways to engage new fans, the CEO said, arguing that his business can provide that hook.

By now, Easton Baseball/Softball Inc., a Van Nuys company that produces baseball equipment, sells the Blast Motion product under its own name.

The technology can be a coaching aid for people looking to improve their baseball games — or their golf games or other pursuits.

Previously, athletes depended on intuition, on what feels right.

“What ‘feels right’ to you might be wrong,” Fitzpatrick said.

A player can collect metrics on his swing. If he goes into a slump, he can look at the numbers to see where he needs to improve. The beauty of the technology, Fitzpatrick said, is that a coach could be halfway around the world and still consult with a student about a swing.

Making a Video

Crunching numbers is not the product’s only neat trick. Blast Motion software automatically edits video of a swing.

On a putting green next to the batting cage, Fitzpatrick demonstrated how the technology ignores a golfer’s extraneous movements and only saves video of an actual putt. Setting aside his golf club and replaying a session of three putts on an iPhone 6S Plus, Fitzpatrick showed the finished product. No extraneous movements. Just the putts, presented with position and timing data, and replayed very slowly to help the viewer carefully analyze the swing.

Company Is Hiring

Blast Motion is growing, it is hiring, and it’s very eager to spread the word about its product. When it comes to disclosing revenue, however, the privately held company is mum.

Fitzpatrick would only say it is in the millions. There is no advantage to discussing revenue, he said, adding he did not want to tip off competitors. The CEO declined to give year-over-year growth, saying such a percentage is meaningless if presented without a hard number to offer context. He added that the company is in a good position to grow, given its agreements with Major League Baseball, Easton, AimPoint Golf (a Florida-based company that offers golfers a coaching and “green-reading” system) and others.

There are a few more clues to the company’s financial strength. Blast employs 60 people (and it’s hiring now). Most are in the company’s new, open-plan office in the middle of Carlsbad’s golf cluster.

It also has invested at least $10 million in research and development. Blast Motion made that point in a patent infringement lawsuit against Silicon Valley-based Zepp Labs, filed in early 2015 in federal court in San Diego.

Zepp makes a very similar motion-sensor product, which it has adapted for baseball, golf and tennis. Mike Trout of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim endorses Zepp. In late June, Tennessee-based Old Hickory Bat Co. introduced a Mike Trout “smart bat” equipped with Zepp electronics tucked into a hole in the bat’s knob.

Blast maintains Zepp has infringed five Blast patents and that Blast has experienced irreparable harm. According to court documents, buyers at certain sporting goods and wireless carrier stores told Blast representatives that they could not stock Blast products because they were already carrying Zepp products and shelf space was limited.

Patent Picture

Blast Motion said it has 32 U.S. patents and an additional 40 in process.

Golfers Brad Faxon and Jeff Sluman endorse Blast’s product, and the Houston Astros have dubbed Blast Motion their official swing sensor. Blast makes software for pros and Little Leaguers alike. The company thinks vertically in its marketing, Fitzpatrick said.

The electronics package that Blast Motion makes weighs three-tenths of an ounce. In a space about half the size of a champagne cork, the company packs accelerometers, gyroscopes and magnetometers; collectively they can sense their position in space and can capture orientation, velocity, acceleration, angular velocity and angular acceleration. The little package also contains all the wireless electronics necessary to send that information to a nearby smartphone via a Bluetooth connection. It has storage and a battery management system on board, to boot.

It was a love for golf that steered Fitzpatrick into the chief executive’s seat at Blast Motion.

Fitzpatrick’s career goes back to the days of mainframe computers. His first startup, in the early 1980s, involved distributed computing. Blast Motion is his fifth startup. Fitzpatrick said he has tried to retire, more than once.

Active ‘Retirement’

The last time he retired, his goal was to improve his golf game. He said he wanted to work on it eight to 10 hours a day, to “practice like it’s a job.” He soon began to wonder whether there might be any technology that might be able to help him understand what was going on with his swing.

“I couldn’t find it,” he said. “There was nothing sufficient.”

At that point, he linked up with Mike Bentley of Encinitas, the company’s co-founder and one of the co-authors mentioned on Blast’s patent documents. Fitzpatrick eventually cut his golfing year short and settled back into the familiar world of business.

So far, Fitzpatrick and friends have put their own money into Blast Motion.

The CEO won’t rule out taking money from outside sources. Blast Motion might consider business opportunities in areas outside of sports. Indeed, its patent for motion-capture technology suggests uses in health care compliance, retail loss tracking, security and baby and elderly people monitoring. There may be military applications, too.

The company would be willing to take outsider money when circumstances warrant it and “at the appropriate time,” Fitzpatrick said.

CEO Michael Fitzpatrick sets up the shot and the shoot. There is a video component to Blast Motion’s system. It edits the video down to the essential movements of the action being evaluated.

BLAST MOTION

CEO: Michael Fitzpatrick

Revenue: Undisclosed

No. of local employees: 50

Investors: Fitzpatrick and friends

Headquarters: Carlsbad

Year founded: 2010

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