Anthony Rizzo And John Mallee Demonstrate New Baseball Technology

SCOTTSDALE, Arizona -- On a brilliantly sunny Monday afternoon (thus the shadows on the videos below), Cubs first baseman Anthony Rizzo and hitting coach John Mallee demonstrated some new baseball and golf tech equipment made by the Zepp Golf people.

The company has created a device that you can attach to the knob of a baseball bat, after which it feeds info about your swing to an app on your phone or iPad (closeup photo below by me, photo of Rizzo courtesy Zepp Golf):

Just as for a player's golf swing (Zepp also has a similar device for golf), this gadget analyzes your baseball swing, with bat speed, etc. shown via the app. Here's Rizzo taking a swing:

Mallee explains how it works in these two short videos:

It was a very interesting discussion of how a swing can be broken down and helped through this kind of technology. Mallee told me that this technology would be quite useful for players at, say, the Cal Ripken League level. For big leaguers, he said, they make more use of things like PitchF/X and similar data.

I know you wouldn't want to leave this article without a look at Rizzo's golf swing, so here it is:

Rizzo claims he's "not a golfer" but his swing looked pretty good to me. Of the other people who took practice swings at TopGolf Scottsdale, where this event was held, I thought the best form was shown by Rizzo's agent, Marc Pollack. Not quite sure what that says about current golfers, but there it is. Thanks to the Zepp Golf folks for their kind invitation and help.