Boston Red Sox
“It’s hard to describe everything we’re doing unless you see it.”
Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer believes in Kyle Boddy’s methods and Driveline’s purpose. Barry Chin/Globe Staff
From the outside in, even with the Red Sox struggling mightily to start the season, Craig Breslow’s decision to fire manager Alex Cora seemed somewhat sudden.
According to The Boston Globe’s Alex Speier, however, this wasn’t a hasty or spontaneous move. It was actually something the chief baseball officer Breslow contemplated during and after last season, at which point Cora told Breslow that if he wanted to fire hitting coach Peter Fatse, he would have to fire Cora as well.
The root of the friction stemmed from the fact that Fatse and his staff were reportedly too focused on subjective factors, rather than objective training goals. Breslow, who works closely with Driveline Baseball founder Kyle Boddy as a special advisor, has added a steady stream of the company’s employees to his staff.
“In recent years, the Red Sox have overhauled their training and development processes throughout the minors, with a significant infusion of employees either from Driveline, a baseball training organization, or versed in its training methods,” Speier wrote. “At the heart of the processes the Sox sought: The collection and use of information and player tracking in both games and training to help players improve. Are players working on the right things, and in the right way, to get better?”
Per CBS Sports’ Julian McWilliams, Breslow and Driveline emphasize pulling the ball in the air, but some in the organization wondered whether the tactics meshed with the hitters on the roster.
Some of the young players don’t buy into Driveline, according McWilliams.
“Inexperience within the coaching staff was also cited as a concern,” McWilliams wrote. “While Driveline’s impact is growing across the sport, some questioned whether the experience level of those implementing it aligned with the demands of major-league roles.”
Even so, as the Red Sox try to revitalize the franchise and reestablish themselves as perennial contenders, it’s clear they’ll continue to lean heavily on the data-driven player-development system.
With that in mind, what is Driveline, how does it work, and how does it affect the Red Sox?
Driveline, founded in 2007 by Boddy, uses advanced technology and science to improve the mechanics, consistency, and firepower of pitchers and hitters.
Boddy, the company’s chief technology officer, joined the Red Sox in 2024 and works in tandem with Breslow. Breslow, who proved he isn’t afraid to take risks and engineer wide-sweeping changes when he fired Cora in late April, has placed his trust in Boddy and his methods.
Red Sox hitting coaches John Soteropulos and Collin Hetzler, both molded by Driveline and its principles, are now two of the franchise’s lead voices when it comes to technique.
Breslow acknowledged that there’s “kind of a stigma” around Driveline and what it entails, but he believes people need to reframe how they’re viewing the company.
“In my opinion, if you take a step back and think about Driveline as more of a mind-set or an approach to development and training, where you’re trying to be very clear in assessing where a player is, you’re trying to identify the goals that would allow them to realize major league value, and then you set up consistent programming and training with measurable progress toward that, to me, that’s what Driveline is,” Breslow said, per The Athletic.
Speier referred to the Red Sox as “thoroughly Driveline-ified.” He noted that development is now widely regarded as a year-round process and a true offseason no longer exists for players, particularly those who are involved with Driveline.
Speier described the Red Sox as “thoroughly Driveline-ified.” He noted that development is now widely regarded as a year-round process and a true offseason no longer exists for players, particularly those who are involved with Driveline.
Kristian Campbell, for instance, spent the 2023-24 offseason in Fort Myers, where the team conducted Driveline-like training.
“That contributed to the overhauled swing and training that turned him from a little-known fourth-round draftee into one of the top prospects in the sport,” Speier wrote.
Former Red Sox reliever Adam Ottavino lowered his ERA from 5.06 to 2.43 from 2017 to 2018 with the Colorado Rockies after an offseason of training with the company.
More recently, Ceddanne Rafaela cut his chase rate by 5 percent, improved his bat speed by a mile per hour, and upped his maximum exit velocity from 108 to 112 miles per hour thanks in part to the Driveline approach.
The company has a “Big Papi drill,” where coaches encourage hitters to lift their leg up before the pitch comes and thrust it forward as a way to generate more power.
The Red Sox finished 3rd in strikeouts last season, & early this year, they lead the Majors.
Craig Breslow brought several Driveline Baseball staffers to Boston, including founder Kyle Boddy, who serves as a special advisor@bradfo explains why this is worth keeping an eye on pic.twitter.com/TRTTFNZt47
— Jones & Keefe (@JonesandKeefe) April 10, 2025
While the Red Sox are at the crux of the action, stemming back to the days with Chaim Bloom as the chief baseball officer, the trend is nationwide. The company now has locations in Seattle, Phoenix, and Tampa, and also helps athletes train where they are.
So, this is all nice, but how does it actually work? What makes it different from other similar companies?
Per Speier, Driveline relies on the following elements, among others:
▪ A high-performance strength and conditioning area with a combination of strength tests that Driveline has refined to identify maximum exit velocities or pitch velocities.
▪ A Dexa (dual-energy X-ray absorptiometry) scan machine to measure bone, fat, muscle, and tissue density for more precise physical assessments.
▪ And perhaps the signature area of the facility, the “Launchpad,” which features a mound and batting area with force plates, 28 motion capture cameras (16 aimed at the batter’s box, 12 at the mound), eight slow-motion, Edgertronic cameras, as well as HitTrax to measure ball flight from a pitcher and hitter. The entire area is synched with an auto trigger that Boddy designed, with customized software that integrates the visual and statistical data being captured by the technology.
“It’s hard to describe everything we’re doing unless you see it,” Boddy told Speier.
MassLive’s Christopher Smith noted that major league teams want to learn the “secret sauce” and have hired more than 75 former Driveline employees. Soteropulos and Hetzler are spearheading the operation in the majors, but other former Driveline employees are scattered throughout the organization.
While there are certainly success stories all over for Driveline, the irony of course is that the Red Sox are 24th in batting average (.231), 28th in home runs (21), and 23rd in runs (123) as of Thursday afternoon.
Management would be the first to admit hitting at the major league level in Boston is still a work in progress, yet Breslow maintained his faith in Boddy and his disciples. Time will tell if the Red Sox escape from the cellar of the American League East, but it’s clear Driveline will play a major role in facilitating those efforts.
“People get typecast and there’s the perception of folks and then there’s the reality,” Breslow said. “Driveline, I think the greatest attribute that they have brought to the game was just kind of an evidence-based, data-driven methodology to develop it.”
Trevor Hass is a sports producer for Boston.com, where he writes and edits stories about Boston’s professional teams, among other tasks.
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