Scouting App Pairs with Stalker Radar Guns for Wireless Pitch Tracking

Professional scout Tim Rock would spend hours writing scouting reports, manually inputting pitch velocity after getting stuck behind a radar gun at the ballpark.

The iProScoutBaseball app he created, now in partnership with Stalker Radar Guns, changes all that. It allows for a wireless connection between the gun and app to automatically record pitch velocity—and now pitch spin—into the app, whether Rock stands with the gun or not, changing the way scouts can, well, scout.

“It is huge,” Rock says of the partnership and improving technology from the two companies. “It allows scouts to keep their eyes on the people and watch the players play. I am going to be moving all over the country and I need something that goes right in my bag and lets me do my job quicker and better using technology. That is what this has done for us.”

Rock, a baseball scout up until the past year who has over 25 years of experience with three major league organizations under his belt, created iProScoutBaseballl Systems in 2012. He says reports that once took him an hour to write he can now finish in 10 minutes. But it is the partnership with Stalker Radar that really stepped up Rock’s product, aligning his app with the “number-one gun in baseball.”

“We pretty much get all the major league baseball gun business and by allowing this automated record keeping system that iProScoutBaseball has developed, it supports our customers,” says Alan Mead, CEO of Applied Concepts, manufacturers of Stalker. “Our customers benefit because of the reduction of labor in the scouting world.”

The relationship between Rock and Mead has helped produce improvements to both products, such as the upgraded Stalker Pro 2+ wireless option.

“If we weren’t working with Tim, we wouldn’t have added that wireless capability to support him and his venture and our customers who wanted to use it,” Mead says. “We were making some changes to our gun, so we built in (wireless) just like you have on your smartphone so you can pair it with the app.”

A few months later, Stalker Radar came out with a model that also measures ball spin, the Stalker Pro IIs, giving Stalker two gun models that work with the iProScoutBaseball app, with the ability to measure baseball speeds from up to 500 feet and spin rate up to 150 feet.

“He is not just the owner of this (app), but a user and professional scout,” Mead says. “He understands their problems.”

Rock says the wireless capability opens up a world of possibilities for scouts. Now, scouts can set up their Stalker guns behind home plate in a holder and then move to the open side of the hitter or pitcher to watch from different angles while still receiving pitch data into the app.

Rock says he’s used the wireless option to allow himself to sit in the shade away from the field on a hot day and out of the rain on a wet day. The mobility the wireless affords him allows him to do his job better at the ballpark and quicker when writing reports.

As the Stalker gun transmits wirelessly to the app, it imports the data into a pitching chart, making it available to email in multiple formats. It’s not just a great fit for professional scouts. Rock says it also gives college recruiters, travel ball coaches and others an opportunity to use a professional-level tool.

“If anybody wants to contact me, they can call me directly,” he says, “I don’t have an automated phone answering system. I will call them back directly and set up a demo or get them anything they need.”

Tim Newcomb covers gear and business for Baseball America. Follow him on Twitter at @tdnewcomb.