About Yakkertech
Yakkertech Co-Founder Bill Bales has had his eyes on the creation of this product for many years. As founder of AboutGolf, he built this INC 500 company to become North America’s #1 premium indoor golf simulator company. As co-founder of PlayData, he fostered the development of the imaging technology used in every AboutGolf simulator which is respected worldwide as the finest and most accurate golf ball and club tracking system in the world.
For years, Bales has wanted to bring advanced imaging, aka machine vision, to sports outside of golf. With the growing value and thus dependence on analytics in the sport of baseball, Bales set his initial sights on producing the ultimate portable and affordable vision-based baseball performance monitor. Only advanced imaging is capable of directly measuring all of the kinematics of a baseball, as well as bat, batter, pitcher, and thrower. Most key is the ability to directly measure, with great accuracy, the precise spin axis of a thrown baseball. For the first time, pitchers will be able to react to measured axis data during their throwing reps to enable them to iteratively and reactively evolve their motion to get the precise results desired. This ability to bring accurate data-based proprioception to baseball will enable pitchers to have their “stuff” practically every time they take the mound.
Aden Seaman is an engineer, physicist, and software developer who is responsible for the software and hardware design of the Yakkertech ball tracker. His extensive experience in high performance computing, stereo machine vision, and mathematical modeling is what makes the Yakkertech ball tracker an accurate, powerful, and portable analytics device.
Stephen graduated from LaGrange College in 2017, with a Sports Management degree. While there, he pitched for the baseball team, ranked #1 nationally in 2017. That same year, the team won the USA South Championship. After graduation, Stephen worked as a pitching coach at the Atlanta Baseball Academy for a year, and then went on to work for Synergy Sports Tech in 2018 as a baseball video scout. He has logged NCAA, MiLB, NPB and KBO games. Additionally, Stephen has experience working in baseball operations for the Tampa Bay Rays, and with TrackMan and KinaTrax. He joined the Yakkertech sales team in February, and is in charge of the Southeast region.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Johnny studied Business Administration at Mississippi State University. Prior to Yakkertech, Johnny worked as a concessions manager for the Wilmington Blue Rocks in Delaware, as well as RFK Stadium in DC. He has also worked as a stat analyst, scout and special assistant for the Peninsula Pilots, a summer collegiate team located in Hampton, VA. Johnny started working with the Yakkertech unit while working for the Pilots, as well as Old Dominion University’s baseball team in 2017. He joined the Yakkertech sales team full time in January 2018, and is in charge of the Mid-Atlantic region.
Matt Anderson studied Business Administration at Long Beach State University. In 2012, he signed a contract with the Seattle Mariners, where he reached the Triple A level. While with the Mariners, Matt was given the opportunity to play in the Arizona Fall League and win a Double A Southern League Championship. After retiring in 2016, he worked in player development with a few different academies that used technology to advance their players. Matt joined the Yakkertech sales team full-time in July 2019 and is in charge of the West region.
After working as postdoc researcher at Universities in Canada and Germany, Dr. Inglis decided to pivot his academic experience in condensed matter simulation into data science and machine vision. His background in statistics and analysis helps Yakkertech run their own studies on baseball flight, and his extensive programming knowledge also contributes to the software that makes the Yakkertech ball tracker the powerful device that it is.
