What is BASE?
Baseball And Softball Evaluation; backed by MLB - it plays everywhere.
Hey guys,
Benny here again. I know I touched on it last time, but like my favorite BP song (My Hood by Young Jeezy) in Harwich in the summertime, it doesn’t hurt to be repetitive…
What is BASE? It’s an acronym: Baseball And Softball Evaluation. Simple. Take your BASE. No, not a walk. Your Baseball And Softball Evaluation. Don’t roll your eyes, it’s witty.
BASE is backed by Major League Baseball and it’s a standardized eval that features tech people trust. The goal here is to provide gold standard resources to players everywhere, anytime they need it and to do so without breaking the bank. The BASE eval covers components of athleticism like sprinting and jumping; and hitting and pitching. It does so many things for young players - like help them identify their strengths and help inform their training and maybe even open up doors.
Okay, but why is BASE? …a thing. Easy peasy. It’s easy to run, it’s affordable, and you can trust the data. What do these ingredients have in common? It plays everywhere - kinda like me in my prime. I once played all 9 in a JV game back in high school. I said coach, watch this, and went ahead and submitted the changes to the ump between innings myself.
Hang it in the Louvre. Me, Kyle Teel and Buster Posey - just three dirtbags who played at least 8 in a single game (sorry, Kyle - me and Buster got our inning on the bump…)
Easy to run
Hard to run is the ultimate wet blanket of evaluation. There is so much technology out there that is a downright pain in the ass - from heavy, clunky hardware to unreliability depending on the setting to calibration issues and even just being hard to use. Most of BASE can be run on an iPhone or an iPad. Like this jump test here using the Loden Sports Performance Lab App which is as easy as taking a video on your phone:
Affordable
When most of the evaluation can be done from a phone, it makes it easy to keep costs down for the folks who want to run BASE - and, for the folks who want to take BASE. And, that’s the goal. Team 1845 is here to solve how to make sure any ballplayer who wants access to a good evaluation can get it without traveling too far or paying too much. Look, they called me Mr. Light Pockets in high school for a reason. I didn’t have it like that. So, to be able to get gold standard data to help inform my training - what I really needed to be working on - could’ve been a gamechanger for me.
You can trust the data.
The tech in this eval is bench-tested. When Trackman (available in Premium + Prospect BASE) anchors the eval from a ball flight data standpoint, it’s hard to shoot holes in it.
Lately: me assisting Team 1845 in some Trackman interpretation at an Area Code tryout in Waco, TX.
When the whole eval produces consistent measures that can be tracked over time, well, then Team 1845 has done the apples to apples thing. Anyone who has ever tried to compare anything between amateur athletes knows apples to apples isn’t easy to accomplish.
Easy to run + Affordable + You can trust the data =
Like my mom’s sauerkraut, BASE has the right ingredients. And with the right ingredients comes great opportunity. Team 1845 is working hard to bring BASE to high school teams, travel programs, training facilities, and events in every corner of the country. The goal is to get everyone looking at the same stuff and speaking the same language. To educate. To make sure no kid gets missed. There’s incredible power in that mission. The game needs some standardization at the amateur level - everything is fractured. Let’s put it back together, together.
For the love of the game,
Benny Bags, Team 1845
If you love the game too, there’s always room for more on Team 1845. Shoot us a note at team@est1845.com - we’d love to chat about how we can help young ballplayers get better and open doors together.
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PS - The streets love Jeezy, I love em back.