How Mercer’s baseball facility uses tech to embrace the future of America’s pastime

If you listen carefully to a Mercer baseball practice inside the team’s newly-built training facility — if you tune your ear past the pings of metal bats, the shouts of players and the whirs and clanks of pitching machines — you can hear the future of baseball.

The sounds come from behind Mercer’s newest technology, a pitching machine called an iPitch. As a player begins batting practice, a trainer working behind the machine hollers to the hitter at the other end of the netted batting cage.

“Slider.” “Fastball, split.” “Offspeed.”

He’s shouting out pitch types, telling the Mercer player what to look for as he places balls into the machine. The trainer does this because the pitches spit out by this iPitch are much different from regular batting practice lobs.

There’s noticeable drop and movement on the balls the machine hurls toward players. Offspeed pitches dip past one batter’s knees. A slider peels off with surprising break just as it crosses the plate.

The iPitch is the crown jewel of Mercer’s new Cantrell Family Baseball Performance Center, a two-story building that opened last month next to the left field line of the Bears’ baseball stadium. 

The facility is packed with new technology and top-of-the-line amenities and gives Mercer an edge in training and recruiting that, according to coaches, rivals the luxuries boasted by the best teams in college baseball.

“When I say it’s as good as anyone’s (facilities) in the country, it’s on the same level as a Power 4 program,” head coach Craig Gibson said. “What we’re able to do is incredible. We can really pinpoint and target certain areas of efficiency. It’s one thing to tell (players what to change). When they have the ability to see it, it takes learning forward.”

The technology puts Mercer at the forefront of the college game — and replicates the science that now shapes America’s national pastime all the way up to the major league level.

On the cutting edge

Gibson compared the iPitch machine to a video game. It allows players to simulate the exact things they might see from a specific pitcher on the field. 

The machine accomplishes this by adjusting the speed of the pitch, the direction and other factors. It can even change the spin rate — how fast the ball spins, measured in revolutions per minute — to get a pitch to move more. Unlike another machine in Mercer’s facility that is controlled only by a trio of knobs on the body of the machine, the iPitch is programmed with a tablet that has a variety of adjustable settings.

While the trainer does sometimes tell a player what’s coming so they can get a better feel for different paths a ball takes, the machine can also have several different pitches loaded at once and throw them at random, approximating an actual on-field at-bat.

“Any pitcher you can think of, it can pitch like them. Even pro guys, you can put in that data,” said Garrett Kemp, Mercer baseball’s director of analytics. “If you want to dial it up to see a nasty slider, like one a real pitcher would throw, you can do that. … If a guy comes in and says, ‘I’m struggling with (right-handed pitchers throwing) changeups,’ he can come in here and hit 100 of them.”

Kemp was a key decision maker who helped choose what equipment would furnish the new facility. Many of the players call him “Moneyball” — the name of the 2011 film about baseball analytics starring Brad Pitt — because of his penchant for advanced statistics and high-tech baseball knowledge. He even helped install Trackman, a system used by MLB and college teams to track advanced statistics during games, when he first arrived at Mercer.

The iPitch is used by 23 Major League Baseball teams, according to its website. Kemp said the key difference between Mercer’s sparkling new digs and an MLB team’s space is that they have less equipment than an MLB organization would have — the gear itself is pro-level stuff.

Kemp said the equipment is more important than ever now that college athletes are developing to near-MLB levels of precision. 

The new machine proved particularly useful ahead of a recent series against Oregon State, a top-10 team in the country and a perennial powerhouse. Mercer had to go up against Dax Whitney, one of the best players in the country.

“When you’re going up against him and he’s throwing 98-100 mph, it’s hard to prepare for that. It’s a short arm slot, it’s fast,” Kemp said. “The ability to tune guys up (to that) in the batting cage is huge.”

Mercer hit two home runs off Whitney. They scored three runs, the most any team has notched against Whitney so far this season.

Kemp also got the team extremely high-speed cameras to help pitchers. The cameras can track a pitcher’s hand before he throws in vivid slow motion, showing the exact moment the player lets go of the ball.

“You can see the very last finger that touches the ball,” Gibson said. “One of our pitchers was having difficulty with his breaking ball, and it basically came down to where he was releasing the ball. … You can see the spin rate and how the ball moves.”

The team also uses Uplift, a motion-tracking program that allows players to study their own movements using animations.

“If you’ve seen the dots they use in CGI for movies, that’s how they used to have to do it. Uplift is great because you don’t have any markers. No dots,” Kemp said. “We can look at shoulder rotation, hip rotation and a lot of things our strength team wants to see.”

In addition to these big-league improvements came dozens of smaller upgrades, Kemp said. There are more TVs where players can watch film or study their own movements tracked by the high-speed cameras or Uplift program. The batting cages on the bottom floor are even big enough to field ground balls in.

The top floor has a large team room that Gibson said is a major luxury for players. Gibson himself also got a sizable office overlooking the field. An outdoor patio offers space for guests — perhaps recruits or donors — to watch games.

The plush facility and its various features represent Mercer baseball embracing a new era.

‘New baseball’

The performance center and its high-tech equipment have been in development for close to three years, Gibson said. He and longtime Mercer donor Charlie Cantrell came up with the idea for the facility, and Mercer announced the project in 2024.

The head coach said the facility and its new-age tools are important because they help the team focus on one of its main goals.

“When we talk to recruits, we talk about development. That’s a huge piece of what we do — the ability to make guys better,” Gibson said.

Player development has set Mercer apart from other programs at the mid-major level of college baseball. Gibson referenced former Bears outfielder Kyle Lewis, who blossomed once he arrived at Mercer. He then became the highest MLB draft pick in Southern Conference history and won the American League Rookie of the Year award in 2020.

Jerseys from Lewis and other Mercer players who made the majors are framed and displayed on the top floor of the facility. Several players from the school have been drafted in recent years, including four players that were all selected in 2022.

To keep that pro development going as baseball evolves, you have to dive head-on into the latest advancements, Gibson said.

“I call it ‘new baseball.’ It’s different, but it’s proven. It works. The best players use it,” he said. “It’s a tool in our toolbox. If it can help us, we’ll embrace it.”

That development helps the team improve as a whole. Mercer has been one of the most consistent programs in the nation for more than two decades. Since Gibson took over as head coach in 2004, the team is 728-504.

Kemp emphasized the importance of the tech in today’s college athletics world, which revolves around the transfer portal and getting athletes in from other schools.

“We’re able to look at all this information and say to a guy, ‘Hey, this is what you looked like at (your last school), this is where we can take you,’” Kemp said. “It helps us with freshmen recruits, too. They’ve never seen stuff like this, most of the time.”

Even former players who return to the facility are impressed with the tech, Kemp said. Players now working their way through the minors can come back to Mercer and have access to professional-grade equipment.

As Mercer baseball tries to remain consistent, coaches think the facility will keep them on the cutting edge.

“Some teams have so much equipment that they don’t know what to do with it, but we use everything,” Gibson said. “I don’t think there’s anything I would do differently. We’ve maximized the space. Now all we have to do is use it.”