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WIN Reality, the virtual baseball tool that simulates live at-bats through a Meta Quest Oculus II, has designed a new truncated weighted bat attachment for release in March.
As of now, users either swing a basic remote or place an attachment on their regular bat when facing virtual reality pitchers. But WIN Reality’s new product is about a third the size of an actual bat and can be adjusted to match the weight specifications of what a player usually swings.
“We want to be able to have our players practice exactly how they play,” WIN Reality’s chief data officer Chris Fiaschetti told SportTechie at the Baseball Technology Innovation Exhibition during last week’s MLB Winter Meetings. “So, it’s actually weighted to specs that a player would want. A drop-3, a drop-8, a drop-12, depending on their level.”
“You can swing and get the same feedback from the weight of the bat that [you’re] swing or imitate… This is an alternative [for users]. Sometimes in confined space you can’t use the big bat because you’re in a room that’s small.”
At last week’s Winter Meetings, MLB teams were particularly enthralled with the Trajekt Arc, a 3D pitching machine that can simulate every major league pitcher and every major league pitch to 0 to 1% accuracy to help prepare players to face the same pitcher in the real life. As of last season, seven teams — including the Chicago Cubs and reportedly the New York Mets — have deployed the Trajekt product, a number the company believes will rise to 10 to 12 by 2023.
But WIN Reality is already used by the majority of MLB franchises and more than 100 NCAA baseball and softball programs. It contains a digital library of approximately 7,000 actual jugs, with two million of their stands. A joint study in 2001 between MLB and WIN Reality showed that major league hitters increased their batting average by 19% and on base percentage by 12% when using the product before the game.
“We work with Major League players every day,” Fiaschetti told SportTechie last week. “We have players that are really into it and use it on a regular cadence. They use it in a bunch of different ways. Whatever it is that they need to do to get themselves mentally prepared to be able to dominate that day, is generally the idea. But as a game preparation tool it can certainly facilitate that as well as a skill development tool in the offseason. So we see a number of guys pick it up in the offseason and be able to stay sharp because there’s obviously not as much live pitching in the offseason. This is their alternative to that.”
As recently as June, the company raised $45 million in financing from Spectrum Equity, a firm specializing in Internet and software.
