The Technological Marvel that is Statcast
Next time you go to a baseball game look towards the press boxes; you may just spot a black box that looks inconspicuous. That black box is the reason Disney paid 1.1 Billion for a third of MLB Advanced Media. That black box collects data for a program called Statcast.
For those of you that aren’t aware of Statcast, you can think of it as a way to track everything that goes on in the baseball stadium. For those of you who are paranoid that you are always being watched, don’t worry: MLB didn’t spend millions of dollars to see how far and how fast you spill your drink. The Statcast tracking system is a combination of two other systems, one a system developed by Trackman that is based on the Doppler radar (flight paths of baseballs are infinitely easier to track than storms) and a few cameras that help with the three-dimensional aspect of the game. Statcast provides a better fan experience by helping the common view to see the subtleties that allow each player to make a catch, hit a home run, or fool a batter. This isn’t just for the viewer though, it is also for the player and other personnel actively part of the game. The players can use this data to determine where to play, to either side or further back or forward,
or can help a smaller batter to realize that at the launch angle they usually hit the ball all they have to do is hit the ball just a bit harder and their home run numbers would increase
.
For those front office executives that build teams it helps them determine which pitcher throws pitches with a higher spin rate (the spin of the ball that goes from a pitcher’s hand to the glove of the catcher in a matter of milliseconds), which regardless of the prior results should trend to more strikeouts.
Even though this was introduced in 2013 teams are still figuring out how to take full advantage of the new data. At a sabermetric seminar (a gathering of some of the brightest minds in baseball) some teams’ executives were actively trying to find the best uses of the hitting portion of the Statcast.