Sports and technology have never been more interconnected than in today’s modern times. Endurance athletes wear vests or watches that track their heart rates. Golfers know their exact launch angle, exit velocity, and spin rate for every club in their bag. Equipment from skis to hockey sticks to racecars have been honed by years of scientific study. One sport that has become increasingly immersed in the world of tech is baseball.
America’s national pastime has certainly evolved. The development of equipment and strength training means that today’s players hit the ball harder and farther than ever, and the pitchers throw with greater velocity and movement than ever. As teams look for any edge they can find in this highly competitive environment, many have turned to sophisticated pitch-tracking technology and performance analytics.
The Bucknell baseball team is no exception. Coach Scott Heather and his staff employ TrackMan, a device that uses Doppler radar to record essential data, such as a pitcher’s release point and the location, movement, spin rate, and spin axis of each pitch. Hitters can see data such as exit speed, launch angle, and flight distance.
TrackMan spits out a mountain of data points, so much so that it can be a round-the-clock job simply to parse the data so that it is actually useful. While the Bison do not have a full-time analytics staff, they do happen to have a senior pitcher on the squad who is a gifted computer science engineer.
Connor Vucovich, a native of Lititz, Pennsylvania, just north of Lancaster, traveled with his grandfather to Indiana for the National Aeromodeling Championships at the age of eight. He won the junior national championship in the catapult glider category, and so began a love for engineering. Eventually, some cousins got Connor interested in building and programming computers, and today he carries a stellar 3.92 grade-point average in computer science engineering at Bucknell.
As a lefthanded pitcher who relies on a sharp breaking slider to keep hitters – especially lefties – off balance, Connor was very interested in his pitch metrics. So he coded a program that translates all of that TrackMan data into user-friendly tables. Heather and pitching coach Jason Neitz use the charts to help the pitchers fine-tune their deliveries, and each pitcher is provided a new report after each outing.
If a pitcher has different release points for his fastball and breaking ball, which could “tip” his pitch to the opposing hitter, the chart will clearly show it, and he can work with the coaches in bullpen sessions to improve what is known as pitch tunneling. If a pitcher is living too much in the middle of the strike zone, his charts will show it. If there isn’t enough of a velocity gap between his fastball and changeup, he will see it in the report.
“Connor’s charts have been extremely valuable for us,” said Heather. “They really simplify the data into something that’s digestible for our guys.”
“The program has a bunch of different steps,” Connor describes. “It takes in all the spreadsheets and puts them into a database, and then it singles out every pitch and plots them all out. There’s a lot that goes into it. I really learn the most from working on projects like this. In a classroom setting the professor will give you a lot of material, but especially with computer science, you aren’t going to fully understand it until you actually have to code it in and figure out the use cases for everything.”
When asked if his program taught him anything about his own pitching mechanics, Connor laughs and says he quickly learned that most of the other guys on the staff throw harder than he does.
“That was definitely a realization, and some of my teammates were sure to let me know that too. I thought about going back into the program and saying, ‘If it’s Connor Vucovich, add a couple of extra miles per hour.’ I’m definitely what you would call a junk-baller. I throw a lot more breaking stuff, and this reaffirmed it. I rely on stuff that moves more so than pitches that will get on you with velo.”
Connor wouldn’t say that he was “destined” to play college baseball, but it certainly runs in the family. His father, Dan, pitched at Northwestern in his native Chicago before launching a successful business career that culminated with a long stint as a vice president at The Hershey Company.
Both of Connor’s older brothers played collegiately. Middle brother Nathan pitched at Haverford, and oldest brother Daniel was a catcher at Holy Cross. Two of his parents’ cousins made it all the way to the big leagues. Wayne Twitchell, a second cousin on his mother’s side, had a 10-year career with five different teams, including a seven-year stint with the Philadelphia Phillies. He was the third overall draft pick by the Houston Astros in 1966, one spot behind Hall-of-Famer Reggie Jackson. George Vukovich, a second cousin on his father’s side, played three years each with the Phillies and the Cleveland Indians.
George Vukovich – yes, that is the correct spelling (the immigration officers at Ellis Island transcribed some of the family with a “c” and some with a “k”) – is best known for his dramatic walk-off home run off Montreal’s Jeff Reardon in Game 4 of the 1981 National League Division Series.
Connor was a three-sport athlete growing up, playing football and basketball in addition to baseball. He figured he would never be fast enough to excel in football or tall enough to play basketball, so baseball became the focus. Connor played on some good club teams, and a big influence was traveling with the family to Worcester for his brother’s games at Holy Cross.
A 2018 Holy Cross graduate, Daniel Vucovich was a member of the Crusaders’ squad that defeated Bucknell in the 2017 Patriot League Tournament championship series. His first career home run also came against the Bison earlier that season.
“I was at the championship game when they beat Bucknell. He still has the ring in his basement and likes to show it to me every time I come over. The only time he ever wears a ring, it’s that one.”
Connor’s biggest takeaway from those long rides to Massachusetts was just how much of a gap there is between high school baseball and Division I college ball.
“I would go from watching my middle brother’s high school games to watching my older brother’s college games, and there was such a huge difference. I just remember being blown away by watching the college guys play at that level. Just how much better they were than the high school kids. It was fun to watch, and as I got older I knew how hard I needed to work to get to that level.”
Connor admits that he has discarded all of the purple Holy Cross hats and shirts that he once wore constantly, now that he is a member of one of the Crusaders’ biggest rivals.
While he had already seen the Bison in the visitors’ dugout, Connor’s first face-to-face introduction to Bucknell came at a showcase during his freshman year at Manheim Township High School. He attended a showcase on Long Island and ran into Coach Neitz. They didn’t talk much about recruiting that day, but Neitz said he certainly knew of his brother at Holy Cross and that he would follow Connor throughout the year. Connor visited Bucknell for the first time during his sophomore year and found Lewisburg to have many of the same charming, small-town attributes as Lancaster. The engineering program was something that set Bucknell apart from many of his other schools of interest, and Connor was also excited about Bucknell’s non-conference schedule.
“Coach Heather definitely emphasizes going down and playing top-notch competition, which is something my brother still talks about from his days at Holy Cross. We played Duke the year after they won the ACC Tournament, and Louisville the year after they were a Super Regional team. We play Penn State every year. Competing to win Patriot League championships is certainly a big part of what we are about, but those long road trips with your teammates are some of the best parts of the year, and looking back on it, that’s the kind of stuff that you really enjoy.”
Connor’s Bucknell career began in the teeth of the COVID-19 pandemic, when social distancing made hanging out with friends and teammates difficult. Fortunately, sixty feet, six inches is greater than the CDC’s recommended distancing protocols, so Connor and fellow freshman catcher Nic Adamo would often find space to throw some bullpens to keep his arm in shape.
Connor reminds his younger teammates that in his collegiate debut, he took the loss in relief against La Salle at Depew Field. He issued a couple of walks, left the game, and both runs eventually scored in a 5-4 defeat. He has battled some command issues throughout his time at Bucknell, but last season he made a career-high 11 appearances, and this season he is seeing more high-leverage work later in games. Connor has struck out 19 batters in 15 innings over the last two seasons, and this year opponents are hitting only .167 against him.
“I think that loss in my first game affected my confidence. It was definitely eye-opening. In high school most of the time you only have to worry about their three-hole hitter. In college, you’re facing that three-hole hitter one through nine. So I struggled my freshman year, and sophomore year I tweaked my elbow and was out for a little bit. But those experiences have helped my confidence and helped me get to where I am now.”
The Bison are off to a 2-2 start in Patriot League play after splitting a four-game series with Navy last weekend. Holy Cross and Army are in town for four tough games this weekend, as the Bison look to get over the hump and win their first conference title since 2014.
If Connor seems like he has a relaxed demeanor these days, perhaps it’s because he already has a job lined up after he graduates in May. He will be working as a software engineer for the Department of Defense in Washington, D.C.
And if the Washington Nationals are ever in need of a good data analyst, Scott Heather and the Bison baseball program have a good recommendation.
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