The media company “Momentum” was started by Cincinnati Reds pitcher Trevor Bauer and one of his best friends and content creator Taiki Green. I got the opportunity to talk to Taiki about his experiences and how Momentum was created
For Taiki, baseball seemed to always be with him as he started from a young age playing the sport and being good enough to even play the sport in college.
“I played baseball all the way through when I was like four or five. Started playing then, played all the way through technical college, I had a scholarship for the University of New Mexico as a left-handed pitcher.”
He explained that baseball had always been in his life even when his career shifted and got opportunities to work in the sport from different capacities. His journey in baseball would end up taking him to DriveLine Baseball, which is a facility that helps players rehab and possibly helps other players revive their playing career in hopes of reaching their dreams.
“I worked there as a trainer initially, when I hurt my shoulder after New Mexico, I went to Driveline to rehab and while I was rehabbing I was working part time helping around the facility and what not.”
This eventually would lead him into a career opportunity that he didn’t see coming as he states, “In order for me to visualize guys’ mechanics, I would just take a video of them and just kinda analyze through slow motion.” He then would take it a step further by adding some notes and edits that would be easier for players to look at and interpret in order for them to perform better.
“Some of the guys that I was meeting at the facility were just super interesting characters, guys that were journeymen, you know played in the big leagues for two or three years and then got hurt or were out of baseball for like five years and wanted to make a comeback.”
One of those players, Casey Weathers, was able to benefit from Green’s videos as he filmed throwing 98 mph which eventually led him to a job as a coach for the Cincinnati Reds.
Taiki then started transitioning into more of a media role with Driveline after asking the team over there if it was okay to which they were perfectly fine. He then started taking it more professionally and started doing freelance work which eventually helped get him to work on a documentary for Beyonce. It also led him to work with various sports companies like EPSN and FoxSports which when asked about that experience.
“FoxSports hired me as a producer, they wanted some like young person to bring ideas in for them. So I worked for them for a short little, like six months, just kinda helped generate ideas for their programming. Things to kinda help liven up the audience and bring new fans versus the old.”
This would end up leading him to work on a piece with former Indians pitcher, Trevor Bauer, during the World Series run in the 2016 season.
What people may not know, is that Taiki is good friends with Bauer, and it eventually led them to start discussing about making a platform that was better suited for the players and their personalities. He ended up taking a drive with Bauer to Sedona, Arizona, while Bauer was there for Spring Training and he was dealing with some media issues at the time.
Bauer’s agent, Rachel Luba, had mentioned something about starting up their own platform that’s specifically meant for the players, which is where some of the discussion happened between Taiki and Bauer. After months of discussion between both of them about starting something up due to their busy schedules, Momentum was finally created in January 2019 with Taiki being the only running everything at the time.
Eventually, the platform started attracting the attention of fans and also content creators that were wanting to work for the platform. This led to the hiring of more people, even though Taiki had mentioned that their plan at the start was to take it slow.
“We have like 6 full time people and then probably like four to five sub contractors, so it’s a small little team still, but we’re still able to do a lot of stuff now. Even with Corona(COVID-19) we’ve been able to pivot which has been nice.”
Even with having more staff, Bauer is still definitely the star of the channel as most of their content is focused around him. Taiki had praised Bauer’s work ethic and his commitment to the platform as he helps Taiki with ideas and producing content, all while being a full-time professional pitcher at the big league level.
“You know he’s having a historic year this year and he’s texting me at 3:30 in the morning like ‘Oh should I do this in the vlog tomorrow?’ Yeah man, but you should also just sleep.”
Taiki says this to show the dedication that Bauer has to their platform, so put in the work ethic of Taiki in combination with his friend in Bauer, they have a killer combo that can take their channel to new heights. The vlog that Bauer had mentioned, is their vlog that is filmed by Bauer as to give fans an inside look into what a season looks like with COVID-19 as no one has ever seen something like it. It helps answer questions on what fans may have about players and how they are dealing with the new season and it’s this type of content that helps separate them from being any average platform.
As far as their channel goes, building up a reputation and following is huge when dealing with any social platform, and Momentum is trying to do just that as they are still relatively new when trying to reach out to players for content. As they are continuously looking for ways to produce new content for their viewers, they have also done something that is definitely new to this side of the sport in an effort to grow the game and interest fans with entertainment.
The future is definitely bright for Momentum as the channel keeps growing and relationships with players and faces of Major League Baseball find their platform and are willing to help. This is an all-in effort to grow the game as a whole and appeal to a new generation of baseball fans, and it shouldn’t go unnoticed.