Baseball stats are going into overdrive
FUTURE IS NOW: MLB rolls out Statcast analytics, which allows fans a much ‘deeper dive’ into the numbers
NEW YORK — Which outfielder sprints the fastest and runs the longest to snag line drives into the gap? Which shortstop is best at throwing from the grass to nip the runner at first? Which catcher gets the ball to second base the quickest?
A new era in analytics starts Tuesday when Major League Baseball rolls out its Statcast tracking technology during the MLB Network’s broadcast of the St. Louis Cardinals’ game at the Washington Nationals.
Real-time access will expand quickly to Fox, ESPN and Turner, then to regional sports networks.
By June, fans should be able to look up leaderboards for hitters’ exit velocity, fielders’ route efficiency, speed and distance, and pitchers’ spin rates and arm extension.
Cameras and sensors installed at each ballpark capture 120,000 bits per second.
“Fans are ready for a deeper dive into what makes this game go,” Bob Bowman, MLB’s president of business and media, said Monday.
All the equipment is in place at the 30 big league ballparks to gather information.
Hardware was built specifically for MLB. Joe Inzerillo, executive vice-president and chief technology officer of MLB Advanced Media, said the cost was tens of millions of dollars.
“You can say that was the fifth-fastest run to first, that was the ninth-fastest catch, the best route efficiency this season,” Inzerillo said.
“A decade from now, we’ll be looking back and saying that was the highest-fourth-decimal point route efficiency that’s ever been captured in baseball.”
Code was written by a pair of Brazilians with Ph.D. degrees: Claudio Silva, a 45-year-old professor of computer science and engineering and data science at New York University, and Carlos Diedrich, a 36-yearold computer graphics researcher at Modelo.
“We’ll have much better tools to study collections of games rather than individual plays,” Silva said. “The next phase of this is trying to study collections of games and what that means for strategy.”
Teams already have access to the data, and MLB thinks its biggest impact will be the defensive metrics.
“We’re going to be able to settle some age-old disputes,” MLB Network President Rob McGlarry said. “They always said (Joe) DiMaggio never had to dive for a ball — they didn’t use that term back then, but presumably because his route efficiency was so good.”
Last year, some of the data was used a day later. For instance, Kansas City’s Eric Hosmer was thrown out at first for a double-play in the third inning of World Series Game 7 for a spectacular double-play started by San Francisco Giants’ diving second baseman Joe Panik, who flipped the ball to shortstop Brandon Crawford with his glove.
Originally called safe by first base umpire Eric Cooper, Hosmer was ruled out after a video review. Statcast determined Hosmer’s speed toward first dropped from 20.9 m.p.h. to 12.9 m.p.h. when he dove into first, and that if he had run through the base he would have been safe by 0.1 seconds — about a foot — rather than being out by 0.02 seconds.
So far this year, data showed Atlanta shortstop Andrelton Simmons needed just 0.11 seconds for his first step on an April 10 grounder by the New York Mets’ Travis d’Arnaud and made a 68.5 m.p.h. throw across his body from the outfield grass in time for the out at first.
Toronto left fielder Kevin Pillar had a 97.9 per cent route efficiency when he climbed the left-field wall to rob Tampa Bay’s Tim Beckham of a home run, covering 81.3 feet at a top speed of 15.2 m.p.h.
Houston right fielder George Springer was even better on April 12, with a 99.1 per cent route efficiency when he stole a walk off grand slam from Texas’ Leonys Martin, covering 93.7 feet at up to 17.7 m.p.h.
All this information could be of interest to video game developers — “certainly can make them even more realistic,” Bowman said.
Because of less frequent frame rates, Inzerillo said it would be laborious and subject to a higher error rate to use the technology to analyze players in previous eras.
Silva wants to see how teams will use all this information in evaluating their players and deciding which ones to sign and trade for. Players can be compared with a theoretical star who is tops in every category, a baseball R2-D2 and C-3PO.