The Business of Baseball

Kai Correa ’11 has a theory as to why a handful of Puget Sound alumni have landed positions in the upper echelons of professional baseball in recent years.

And while some of it has to do with the Loggers’ on-field success in the sport, much has to do with what happens in the classroom.

“The vast majority of the classes are smaller and are in boardroom settings—and if you didn’t come strapped in, having done the reading and willing to hold your position, you were going to get bulldozed,” says Correa, who is the bench coach for the San Francisco Giants. “And in higher-level baseball, you have a ton of meetings, discussion, and debates with really bright people, from front-office employees to coaches and players and scouts.”

That level of preparation at Puget Sound makes Correa feel like he’s still sitting in a classroom when he engages in his professional life. And it’s helped a number of other Loggers forge careers in a sport where analytics and data play a bigger role than they ever have.

Here are five of those success stories.

Eric Crispell ’17

Hometown: Pleasanton, Calif.
Current gig: Innovation and research assistant, Milwaukee Brewers

How he got there: “One day in mid-January, I was eating lunch in ‘the sub’ contemplating my summer plans,” says Crispell, a former pitcher for the Puget Sound baseball team. After realizing he didn’t have any summer plans, Crispell recalled that Professor of Exercise Science Gary McCall was seeking a summer research assistant for his sabbatical work. McCall said he was looking for a sophomore or junior; Crispell, a soon-to-be fifth-year senior, decided to inquire anyway, and got the gig. That experience led McCall to encourage Crispell to pursue an internship with the Milwaukee Brewers, which eventually led to a full-time job.

Trade secrets: Crispell isn’t permitted to go into too much detail about his research for proprietary reasons, but, he says, “I can say that I work with various departments throughout the organization, and that my work is rooted in sports science.” That means collaborating with everyone from strength and conditioning coaches to player development staff members, like hitting and pitching coaches, plus scouts, research and development, and medical staffers, as well as outside companies or vendors from which the Brewers may have purchased technology. Crispell works mostly with the Brewers’ minor leaguers in Phoenix, but he also works with major league players during spring training.

Information delivery: “The willingness of players to have an open mind and learn about how they could improve their performance has changed drastically,” Crispell says. Still, that information has to be delivered in a nontechnical way so that the player can incorporate it into their performance—and that can vary from person to person. “It really is an art form,” he says.

Anthony Brady ’16

Hometown: Idaho Falls, Idaho
Current gig: Director of sports science, Driveline Baseball

How he got there: After undergoing two Tommy John surgeries while at Puget Sound to reconstruct the ulnar collateral ligament in his pitching arm, Brady rebuilt his career with a stint at Driveline, a data-driven pitching incubator near Seattle that focuses on honing mechanics and building velocity. He worked toward his graduate degree in biomechanics while pitching for University of Northern Colorado, and then went back to work full time at Driveline, where he now supervises a sports science staff of more than a dozen—including another Logger, Ben Jones ’16.

Big names: Brady idolized San Francisco Giants pitcher Tim Lincecum while growing up—and later got a chance to work with him at Driveline when Lincecum was trying to revive his career. By now, Brady’s gotten used to bold-faced names coming through Driveline, including multiple Cy Young Award winners. Driveline works with youth players and high school athletes, but also has contracts with a multitude of professional and college teams, as well as international franchises in the Dominican Republic and Japan, and some major league franchises. What he’s learned: “There are no rules,” he says. “There’s so much individuality with movement patterns when it comes to pitching.”

Velocity is king: A 2019 Washington Post story referred to Driveline as “the epicenter of baseball’s velocity movement.” That move toward analytics and sports science has been a mixed blessing for Major League Baseball, where home runs and strikeouts have supplanted the “small-ball” that often defined the game in the past. “There are aspects of that small-ball stuff that are exciting,” Brady says. “But I also think watching [New York Mets pitcher] Jacob DeGrom go out and throw 100 mph is awesome.”

Kai Correa ’11

Hometown: Hilo, Hawai`i
Current gig: Bench coach, San Francisco Giants

How he got there: After his playing career at Puget Sound ended, Correa and teammate Craig Driver ’11 coached a local traveling team; then Correa got a job as an assistant on the Loggers staff, where he helped turn around the team’s defense. He was then hired at University of Northern Colorado, where he again helped the team’s defense—and, because of the school’s lack of recruiting resources, he began recording videos on social media that quickly drew a following from baseball people at all levels. After joining the Cleveland Indians organization in 2018, he connected with Gabe Kapler, then managing in Philadelphia, and when Kapler went to the San Francisco Giants in 2020, Correa was one of his first hires.

Meticulous approach: Correa’s father and grandfather both coached high school baseball in Hawai`i, but he prides himself on combining old-school ideas with more analytical thinking. And he credits the rigorous academic atmosphere at Puget Sound with developing his approach. “I think the system and the process and the intellectual curiosity are important for the improvements that happen, more so than an actual specific physical change, because it’s so different from player to player,” he says. “It was about creating systems that led to long-term results.”

Working with professionals: The leap from working with small-college players to working with All-Stars like Giants shortstop Brandon Crawford can seem huge, but “arguably, the most important thing is remembering that this game is exceptionally hard,” Correa says. “Just because they’re guys who have baseball cards and play in front of thousands of people, it doesn’t mean that they’re not going to make mistakes. That’s the one advantage I think players who have less expensive playing backgrounds like myself have—I never ever think that the game is easy.”

Craig Driver ’11

Hometown: Seattle, Wash.
Current gig: First base/catching coach, Chicago Cubs

How he got there: After playing three years at Puget Sound, Driver became the catching and first base coach in 2012 under then-coach Brian Billings (a former catcher himself), then served as recruitment coordinator and head assistant coach from 2014 until 2016. After a stint at Yale, he was hired as the Phillies’ bullpen catcher and receiving coach, largely on the strength of his ability to tutor catchers like three-time All-Star J.T. Realmuto and help them “frame” pitches by using subtle movements of the wrist and body to win more called strikes from umpires. He joined the Cubs before the 2020 season.

Built to catch: “I was really born into the catching position,” Driver says. “My dad was a catcher, and his experience with the position always pushed me to it.” For Driver, leadership and game management are two of the keys to success at the catching position, but he also focuses on teaching physical skills that “often get missed in programs that don’t have a coach dedicated to coaching catchers”—something that he had during his time at Puget Sound, under both Billings and former Puget Sound assistant Joe Dominiak.

Evolution of the catcher: “The position has definitely become more analytically driven with the way that people value receiving or pitch framing,” Driver says. “It’s created somewhat of an arms race, where all teams are working to figure out how to win more strikes.” Sometimes, Driver says, that leads to less of an emphasis on blocking balls or throwing out base-stealers. Still, he says, the key to successful coaching remains “your relationship to your players. If they know you’re in their corner and can help them, most will listen.”

Bryson Nakamura ’12

Hometown: Honolulu, Hawai`i
Current gig: Director of player performance, Milwaukee Brewers

How he got there: After physical therapy and targeted workouts helped him recover from an elbow injury as a high school pitcher in Hawai`i, Nakamura became fascinated with studying PT. He started college at Oregon State, then transferred to Puget Sound, and after graduating, went to University of Oregon to get his Ph.D. in human physiology. That led to a sports science internship with the Tampa Bay Rays, then an internship with the Brewers before he landed a full-time role as a medical and performance coordinator in Milwaukee. Eventually, he moved up to become director of player performance.

Research vs. reality: “It’s definitely a balance between research and translating that knowledge into real-life applications for our coaching staff and players,” Nakamura says. Determining an individual plan for each player to improve can take more time and effort, but it’s also helped Nakamura carve a niche for himself. “Sometimes the position you want doesn’t exist yet, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do it,” he says. “Observe, find the questions that aren’t being answered, and fill the gaps.”

The data revolution: As science and data have become more relevant topics within baseball, Nakamura says, the emphasis on analytics should always be balanced out by what a baseball scout or coach might “see” with the naked eye during an evaluation. In other words, it’s impossible to measure everything with data, and the instincts of those who have been around baseball for years should still count for something. “It’s my belief that both perspectives could, and should, live in concert with each other,” he says. “Let’s measure what matters. And then let’s use our experts to fill in and contextualize the information that we collect.”