Longmont grad Dagin Renck finds his niche in professional baseball –…

Compared to the amount of high school and college athletes, professional athletes are in rare company.

Dagin Renck’s story, however, proves that a future in sports is not limited to the playing field.

A Longmont High School graduate and former collegiate pitcher at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, Renck’s passion for the diamond game spilled over the chalk lines and into the world of video scouting and analytics.

After graduating from UCCS in just three years, Renck knew he wanted to remain in the sports world, stemming significantly from growing up with a father, Troy, who has made a long career in sports media and currently is an anchor for Channel 7 in Denver.

Dagin started his post-athletic life as a baseball video scout for Sports Info Solutions, where he’s mastered the art of assembling scouting reports and showed his passion for the grind of baseball.

“Doing 40-to-50 hours a week was a great way for me to show that I had a pulse on baseball,” Dagin Renck said. “You have to show that you love the grind to work in this field. You have to be slightly obsessive about it and want to work on a Thursday afternoon when you’re 3,000 miles away from home in a small town, watching Double-A baseball. You’ll figure out pretty quickly if you’ll love it or not.”

The grind paid off, and the following offseason, after applying to jobs within Major League Baseball, Renck joined the Los Angeles Dodgers as a video associate, focusing on player development. With the Dodgers, Renck headed up the video analytics with the High-A affiliate Great Lakes Loons.

During his season with the Loons, the team won the first half of the season and finished 25 games over .500 making the experience much more rewarding.

“I love being a part of the clubhouse,” Renck added. “Nothing is more rewarding than coming back to the clubhouse after a night game when the team wins, the music is bumping, and everyone is happy. Being a part of such a successful team was rewarding, especially being able to pop champagne and celebrate with the guys.”

Despite loving his time with the Dodgers and hoping for a full-time position, Renck moved teams after last year’s MLB season to the Dodgers’ northern California rivals, the San Francisco Giants. In February, he started in the same role with the Giants’ Double-A affiliate, the Richmond Flying Squirrels.

Whether setting up cameras, cutting up clips, or advanced analytics systems like the TrackMan portable to track pitch spin, Renck’s main job is supporting players with information to improve their performance.

“The primary role is to be supportive to the coaching staff and help the players,” Renck said of his job. “Being able to help them [the players] live out their dreams and hopefully end up in the big leagues is ultimately the most rewarding aspect of the job.”

Although he only just began working with the Giants, Renck already can tell both the organizations he has worked for are in the top echelon of analytic use.

“I would say those two clubs are definitely at the forefront,” Renck said. “Especially with Farhan [Zaidi’s], the Giants’ president of baseball operations, background with the Dodgers and bringing his analytic background to the Giants. Both teams are trying to collect as much data as possible, no matter how small, to find the value in players that maybe we didn’t see 5-to-7 years ago.”

Many athletes find themselves in a similar situation where their playing career is over, but what comes next is often a difficult question. Renck’s budding career is a fitting example of how former players can use their knowledge to carve out a niche while still staying close to the game.

“No doubt a lot of the process is hard,” Renck admitted. “I would say you have to lean on your personal experiences in sports and be able to talk about the times you have overcome adversity or helped lead your teammates because I think a lot of employees look at that kind of stuff as being a crucial part of the team sport mentality.”

Renck might be behind the scenes most of the time, but traveling with a professional team brings its own perks and resembles the team environment that people like Dagin are not officially a part of anymore.

“The fact that I get to work with professional athletes day in and day out and being in a clubhouse where that’s kind of your working environment is one of the coolest things,” Renck said. “It is where you celebrate wins and where you have to get all your work done. There’s nothing quite like the clubhouse. It is a grind, but the relationships are real and very rewarding.”