Former Pro Baseball Player Shows Value of Athletes In Data Tech World

Photo credit: Athos

With ever-increasing amounts of analytics and data, it helps technology companies to have a former athlete on staff — just like Athos’ Josh Wilkie.

Wilkie, a former professional baseball player, joined the startup in June 2018 and has provided an inside look at how the company’s products integrate with an athlete. As regional director of team partnerships for Athos, Wilkie helps teams understand the benefits of the product: Compression shorts with embedded sensors.

“My mission with this company is getting players and elite athletes into these shorts and understand what movements they are doing that can put them at risk for injury and what they can do to prevent it,” said Wilkie, who spent seven seasons in the Washington Nationals’ organization from 2006 to 2013.

“This is a layer of muscular data that is different than what’s out there. When I was playing, there was zero technology and monitoring. It was just this workout and why, but there wasn’t a lot of why behind what we were doing.”

Wilkie ultimately ended his playing career because of a shoulder injury, which caused him to begin his search for another path. Always an early adopter of technology — he studied electronic music at George Washington University — from his earliest memories of Microsoft Encarta to tinkering with primitive Mp3 players, new technology was always interesting to him.

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As he wrapped up his career, a friend living in San Francisco was an obvious move to get off the East Coast and into the tech mecca of the world.

He found his first technology job through Craigslist, before finding himself in an early stage startup. Eventually, he made the jump to Athos, a sports-based technology company Wilkie said couldn’t be a more perfect fit.

Wilkie has had several surgeries as a result of his baseball career and by using the product he now sells, he can get an idea of where his potential future issues are. He said a few months ago his knee was aching, so he looked at data, which said his left hamstring was taking on 70 percent of the load.

“Those are the things you can intervene on,” he said. “You alleviate it before it’s a real issue and nip an injury in the bud; align the tires.”

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He plays an important role in a startup in helping clients understand how the technology works. A lot of the tech measuring data being put on the market really doesn’t help athletes much.

“It’s been eye-opening to see what’s possible and how much bull is out there,” he said. “It’s cool there’s all these numbers, but a lot of them are arbitrary and don’t mean much of anything. They just are spit at you.”

The former relief pitcher added, “Like your pitch rotation is XYZ, what do you actually do with that?”

Athos CEO Don Faul said there are certain backgrounds he likes employees to have to keep up with demands of a growing tech business, and an athlete fits the bill.

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“With an accomplished athlete background I know that means a strong work ethic, grit, smarts, a sense of teamwork, and equal parts confidence and humility,” Faul said. “Josh brings all of that and experience in another tech company. That’s a powerful combination that has made him an outstanding addition to Athos. 

“Josh was able to [have an impact] very quickly as his background prepared him so well for this opportunity, and that alignment will enable him to continue to grow his impact at Athos.” 

Wilkie said he feels his presence is valued, as the company’s team of 45 full-time employees are constantly iterating and seeking the feedback of players and coaches. For him, he likes the aspect of providing useful data that could help a future player avoid a career-ending injury and keeping teams at full-strength.

“We’re building a platform for injury prevention. That’s where we started and now building at a scale for player availability,” Wilkie said. “From a fundamental level, if teams have more players available, they’ll win more games.”