Report from Career Development Award Winner Mira Mutnick - Take the Field
3/12/2025 7:52 pm
The International Women in Biomechanics Career Development Award allowed me to attend the Major League Baseball (MLB)’s “Take the Field” Event at the 2024 Winter Meetings in Dallas, TX. “Take the Field” is a two-day professional development event for women interested in baseball careers. Attendees get the opportunity to network and learn from current baseball employees. While this was not my first foray into the world of working in baseball, it was a transformative experience that broadened my opportunities and perspective.
I got my start in biomechanics during my undergraduate degree, where I studied biomedical engineering. My curriculum focused on microscopic physiology, but I was always interested in whole-body biomechanics. I have a disability which causes my body to move not quite the same way as the “average” person, and thus, I became fascinated by human movement. During my last semester of undergrad, I took a class on sports science. I was on track to graduate a semester early, and with my sights set on a PhD program in the fall, I had enough time to gain industry experience. On a whim, I looked up “baseball biomechanics” jobs on Indeed and found a research fellowship with the Minnesota Twins MLB team. I read through the job description and felt I was qualified enough for it. I tried not to have too many expectations on getting this job, but I knew the best way not to get the job was to not apply. I took a chance on a one in a million opportunity that ended up changing the trajectory of my career.
Mere weeks after graduating with my bachelor’s degree in warm Atlanta, Georgia, I rented a minivan and moved my life up to the great white north of Minneapolis, Minnesota as a Sports Science Research Fellow for the 2023 MLB season. There were so many “pinch-me, how-did-I-get-so-lucky” moments: from taking walks around an empty major league stadium to getting paid to watch baseball games through a sixteen-camera motion capture system (shoutout to KinaTrax). After an incredible summer immersed in the world of baseball biomechanics, I moved my life once again, this time to Ann Arbor, Michigan, to pursue my PhD in biomedical engineering with a concentration in biomechanics. I started graduate school with a new dream of returning to a major league club after I developed the skills and confidence to be an independent researcher. While my current research is not related to baseball biomechanics, I wanted to keep up the connections I had with the industry by finding opportunities to network and continue to gain exposure.
As I was deciding whether to apply for “Take the Field” and how to pay for the travel expenses if accepted, I saw an email about IWB’s Career Development Award. I had become a member of IWB when I attended a networking event at the American Society of Biomechanics Conference earlier that year. I reached out to ask if “Take the Field” was eligible for the award and was encouraged to apply. Right before I got accepted to “Take the Field”, I received the email that I had been chosen to receive the Career Development Award, sponsored by KinaTrax, to help pay for the remaining expenses.
Take the Field was a whirlwind of opportunity, relationship building, and life advice. The event started with a keynote address by Michaelene Courtis of the Texas Rangers who shared her story of starting and growing her career in baseball. She also shared advice with the room full of over a hundred attendees – women with a dream of working in the industry. She emphasized the importance of being a good teammate, competing with passion, and dominating the fundamentals of any job off the field.
The rest of the event was a mix of panels and breakout sessions. In the “Take the Field” Alumnae panel, women, who had started in baseball through the program, shared their experiences. They emphasized the importance of soft skills – building and managing genuine relationships – and reassured us that mistakes are part of the journey, with very few being fatal. The “Baseball Operations” panel taught me how many of the skills I’m developing in my PhD are transferable to baseball, even if my research is not directly related. During the “Women in Baseball” panel, I had the opportunity to hear from Megan Stewart, Lead Strategist of Movement Solutions for the Milwaukee Brewers. She is a key female figure in baseball biomechanics - here was someone doing a job I could see myself in after graduate school. For the past year and a half, I had been worried that I made the wrong decision to pursue my PhD instead of sticking it out in baseball with a bachelor’s degree. After the panel, I sought out a conversation with her, and all of my anxieties dissipated. While it is possible to land a biomechanics job without a PhD, I would be better equipped, both personally and professionally, for the job I want with one.
In breakout sessions, we sat at tables with current club and league representatives and had more focused conversations about analytics (including biomechanics), baseball operations, player development, and coaching, among other disciplines. In my breakout session about analytics, not only did I get to connect with an analyst for the Philadelphia Phillies and share how we applied the scouting scale to food, but I also realized I was in a unique position among other attendees. Having worked in the industry before and being a graduate student among undergraduates without industry experience, I found myself serving as a mentor as well as a mentee. While I sought career advice from current club representatives, some other program participants sought advice from me. Other attendees were asking me about my experiences working for a club and about my decision to go to graduate school.
In another breakout session, I had the opportunity to connect with current major league coaches and former World Series champion Gregor Blanco. I asked about the role of biomechanics technology from a coaching perspective. While we can conduct exciting research in the front office, I wanted to know what on-field applications look like. They emphasized that biomechanics is crucial for baseball teams, but the key is to communicate it clearly and effectively. Younger athletes may be more open to adopting the technology than more experienced players, while young international players may not have been exposed to this data or technology before.
My biggest takeaway from “Take the Field” was learning to apply the work I’m doing in my PhD program to a career in baseball. I entered graduate school with a baseball perspective, but now I am transitioning to bring an academic perspective back into the sport. As I finish my dissertation, I will be able to identify transferrable skills as I gain them, instead of trying to compile all of this in hindsight. The résumé review session helped me filter through my relevant experiences and convert my multi-page academic CV into a one-page résumé. Working on a dissertation is a massive exercise in project management, as many aims are balanced across multiple years. The technical skills of motion capture, wearable technology, kinetics, etc. are directly applicable to the types of analysis I would be exposed to in baseball. Communicating results at conferences to various audiences and stakeholders (biomechanists, clinicians, engineers) is comparable to communicating pitch/swing mechanics to executives, analysts, coaches, and players. While I still have a couple years before I break back into baseball, I can’t wait to take the field with even more connections, experience, and motivation than before.
I want to express my utmost gratitude to the International Women in Biomechanics and KinaTrax for supporting my participation in this event!
Here are some photos of the event!
Written by:
Mira Mutnick, Biomedical Engineering PhD student at the University of Michigan Rehabilitation Biomechanics Lab
