We have more ways to evaluate baseball than ever before, yet it still feels like we’ve only seen the tip of the analytical iceberg. There are still so many aspects of the game we’re unable to fully understand or accurately measure.
On Saturday, at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, Major League Baseball Advanced Media introduced its new “player tracking” system that, basically, will measure everything that happens on the field. I’m not joking when I say everything. The ball, the fielders, the whole nine. Here’s more from Mark Newman (of MLB.com, not the Yankees’ front office):
The goal is to revolutionize the way people evaluate baseball, by presenting for the first time the tools that connect all actions that happen on a field to determine how they work together. This new datastream will enable the industry to understand the whole play on the field — batting, pitching, fielding and baserunning — and enable new metrics for evaluation by clubs, scouts, players and fans.
For instance, on a brilliant, game-saving diving catch by an outfielder, this new system will let us understand what created that outcome. Was it the quickness of his first step, his acceleration? Was it his initial positioning? What if the pitcher had thrown a different pitch? Everything will be connected for the first time, providing a tool for answers to questions like this and more.
You can see the system at work in the video above, though there is much more to it than that. Only three ballparks (Miller Park, CitiField, Target Field) will have the system up and running for this season, but the goal is to having it operational in all 30 parks by 2015. I’m surprised all of this information will be publicly available, to be honest. I thought it would be kept proprietary.
Needless to say, this new system will change the way the game is evaluated. The stuff we have now is good, but it doesn’t compare to detailed information on defensive routes, first step quickness, batted ball quality, and a million other things. There has not been a reliable way to accurately measure that sorta stuff until now. It’ll be a while until we have this data for the entire league and learning how to properly use it will take even longer, but man, this new system is a gold mine.
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