Technology in Baseball

Baseball has been dominated by analytics for years and new technological developments have proven to have an immense impact on the nature of the game. New stats and algorithms have changed how players are evaluated and have allowed players to completely revamp their careers along with changing the way the game is played.

History

Bill James initiated the baseball analytical movement in 1982 with his book titled ‘’The Bill James Baseball Abstracts.’’ The book offered a different perspective on analyzing the outcomes of each baseball “event” and jump-started baseball's fascination with numbers. James realized there was value in the static nature of baseball; the idea that each pitch and subsequent play is separate and can be recorded. He was the first to take advantage of the enormous quantity of information a single game of baseball produced. This initial movement materialized in the form of multiple new stats, like runs created and win shares, which were used as a new way to evaluate players.

In the early 2000s, Billy Beane emerged as the next catalyst in this analytical movement when he revolutionized the game with the Oakland A’s by valuing stats like on base percentage over batting average. Beane built off of the work of James by prioritizing numbers and recorded results over the traditional eye test of mechanics and body types. Beane’s success, accompanied by the documentation of his story by Michael Lewis, influenced a lot of other teams to start hiring more analytical minds.

Technology

General comfort with stats and analytics likely played a role in the relatively quick adoption of technology to improve performance. Around 2012, new machines capable of measuring a number of different variables on a moving baseball started to emerge throughout the major league baseball scene and drastically influence the game.

Rapsodo

A sample output on a Rapsodo machine.

Rapsodo is a leading company in sport analytics technologies. They specialize in machines used for tracking movements of baseballs, softballs, and golf balls. For baseball, they have two separate machines with exceptionally high-quality cameras able to track things like spin rate and launch angle. The machines are each specialized for tracking pitches or batted balls but in general, these machines are used more often by pitchers than hitters.

HitTrax

HitTrax is also a popular company in baseball for producing supplemental data on player performance. It condenses many of the capabilities of the Rapsodo machine into one device with an emphasized focus on collecting hitting metrics. It can calculate metrics such as the impact power and break of a pitch, but also offers simulation technology that allows players to simulate results in smaller spaces like batting cages.

VR Training

Baseball VR training

Baseball athletes are now also using VR headsets to improve their baseball skills. The VR headsets simulate the player standing at home plate as the batter. They are sent pitches that they must decide whether or not to "swing" their bat at. Claims are that this sort of training helps players' plate discipline, as in the ability to stay patient and not swing at bad pitches.

According to VR companies like WIN Reality there are scientific benefits to the training:

Usually, “occlusion” is used in a medical context, referring to the obstruction of blood or other fluid flow. More broadly, however, it simply means that something is obstructed. Specifically for our context, occlusion refers to the obstruction of information about the true nature of a pitch type; or, what we know as pitch tunneling. Win Reality’s Occlusion Training teaches hitters to overcome tunneling by identifying previously unnoticed but available pieces of information about the pitch. Instead of being forced to guess what the pitch is going to be, Win Reality athletes learn how to “rely on the earliest bits of useful information indicating possible pitch type, location, and timing, to build predictive models (in their heads) and improve how they process that early information.”

Essentially, WIN Reality asserts that Occlusion Training improves a hitters ability to recognize a specific type of pitch. This is achieved by somehow emphasizing or pointing out small, but visually available, details about a pitch in regards to the type of break it will have.

Protective Gear

Pitcher wearing protective helmet

In response to five Major League Baseball pitchers being struck in the head by line drives in 2016, the MLB began to explore new head protection technology for its pitchers. The MLB prototyped a “hybrid of a cap and a helmet” that aimed to protect the areas of the head that are most susceptible to catastrophic injuries. The prototype was manufactured by baseball company isoBLOX and is meant to be worn under standard New Era nylon caps. The product, despite being very effective, raised doubts among its users. Dan Jennings of the Miami Marlins was one pitcher who was stuck with a 101 mph liner to the head in 2014. Still, in an interview afterwards, he expressed that “I don’t think many guys will wear anything unless it is mandatory.” One focal reason being that the head technology looked drastically different than a traditional baseball cap. Jennings at the end of his interview suggested an alternative in using softer baseballs to mitigate pitcher risk.

MLB/Apple iPad deal

Kansas City Royals Coach using an iPad

In 2016 the MLB signed a multi-year agreement with Apple to provide every team with iPad Pro tablets in an effort to assist coaching staffs with making data-based decisions. Using the iPad, teams are given the ability to take advantage of all the statistics accumulated for them in a custom app called MLB Dugout. The application is developed and maintained by MLB’s New York-based Advanced Media division alongside Apple. The data used by each team in the app is proprietary to each team, creating emphasis for baseball teams to develop their own data analytics team. This change drew similarities with the $400-million agreement between Microsoft Surface tablets and the NFL. The main difference between these agreements is that Apple will not require managers to use their iPad’s. Pirate’s manager Clint Hurdle expressed his interest in the devices but ultimately decided to not use one as he expressed faith in his coaches to relay prevalent information to him instead.

Player Improvement

Trevor Bauer, one of the top pitchers in baseball right now is famous for embracing analytics.

These technologies have proven to have huge benefits for player improvement. With so much data available, players have been able to tweak very specific things in their mechanics to drastically change results. Trevor Bauer is one of the most popular examples of a pitcher using this technology to improve their performance. He, along with many others, have started to use machines from Rapsodo to increase movement on their pitches or even invent new ones. Additionally, hitters use this technology to perfect their swing mechanics. They strive for maximized exit velocity and will even change their swing path looking for a more advantageous launch angle. This technology has become integral to the professional baseball player's routine and influenced major changes in the way the game is played. The emphasis on launch angle has led to an increase in home runs, while the emphasis on pitch movement has certainly played some role in the increase in strikeouts. These trends cannot solely be attributed to the new technology available to players, but tech certainly played some part.

Ethical Implications

The dominance of technology and analytics in baseball has leveled the playing field in some ways. The emphasis on numbers slightly reduces the level of bias executives might take based on a player's physical appearance. However, the technology is very expensive (a Rapsodo machine costs anywhere between $4,000 and $9,000) which means it’s not very accessible. Thus, as with most technology, there exists a technological gap between communities that can use this technology and ones that can't. When it comes to Major League Baseball, this gap doesn't exist. But it is much more apparent at the lower levels of the sport. For example, the larger colleges in the more profitable conferences are able to afford this machine and use it to improve their player's performance whereas the small Division III schools aren't. The existence of this technology has not created this gap, but it has accentuated it; making it harder for players starting at smaller schools or in lower-income communities to improve at the same rate.

Additionally, the increased use of technology has opened the doors to cheating within the sport. Multiple scandals within the last five years involving the use of technology have called for regulation when it comes to the use of different devices. As is the case in many fields, as technology advances at such a high rate, regulations often have to be reactionary because the technology is so new. In 2017, the Astros used an aspect of their new technology to cheat. That season, their video replay room used live video feeds mid-game to decode signs used by the catcher to communicate to his pitcher. The decoded signs, not supposed to be of knowledge to the other team, were passed to a player who would relay the decoded information to the dugout. In 2018, the Astros, relocated their video replay room closer to their dugout. With this new closer location, the Astros created a “banging scheme,” which involved hitting trash cans to relay information. One bang represented an off-speed pitch, while two indicated a fastball, according to MLB documents. The MLB changed rules about live camera feeds for the 2020 season as a reaction to the Astros World Series scandal of 2017, but it was met with some backlash from players who used the technology legally in the seasons before.

References

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