The crack of a bat, the whip of a baseball, for generations these skills of America’s pastime have been noted by the eyes of those who gauge the game. Trained scouts and coaches watch and help build players, honing their skills from the time they are drafted all the way until retirement. But now technology has caught up with America’s pastime.
As San Francisco Giants CIO Bill Schlough tells me, “when a new technology emerges and does have an impact on the team, we want to be among the first to have a competitive advantage…those competitive advantages don’t last for long though.”
As Bill explains, new technology is quickly embraced by teams, so any competitive advantage likely only last for a few months and a year at the most. So this new modern tech throwing baseball minds a curve by modern science, means every single pitch can be tracked by a computer. Noting the speed, spin, even every movement down to a fraction.
The technology is developed by Sportvision, the same guys who brought you that yellow first down marker line on your television set for football, or the glowing puck for NHL games. Now this technology is now being used by every single big league club to track their pitches and you can also see it on Fox Sports coverage of Major League Baseball games. You can see by the video posted below, I did my best to check the system out.
So how does this all work? Placed strategically around AT&T ballpark in San Francisco, the camera’s mounted by Sportvision are monitored by people on computers hired to run the system in each park and what began as tracking pitches can now also be used to track every single player and umpire…guaging how fast they run, react and even the route the take to get to the baseball. No more will reputation or flash have an impact on a player, but true numbers and times will and can be assigned.
President of Sportvision Mike Jakob says, “It gives you information, it helps give you greater insight, greater perspective into how amazing these athletes really are.”
And while teams can use this information to evaluate players, fans can also use the new technology…tracking the speed of the pitch on a MLB smartphone app for example. That means as a fan, you can accurately yell at the umpire for a bad call…all the way from the cheap seats. What do you think?