Thu, Apr 23, 2015 page19

• Technology brings new way to evaluate old ball game

  • NY Times News Service, NEW YORK
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  Which outfielders take the most efficient routes to a fly ball? Which pitcher’s curveball has the highest spin rate? Which batter has the fastest speed to first base?

  Major League Baseball believes it has the answers to those questions and many more with Statcast, a system combining two technologies — radar and optical tracking using ultrahigh-resolution cameras — that is installed in all 30 ballparks.

  By quantifying almost every on-field movement, Statcast could change the way fans watch the game and how teams evaluate and pay players, measure performance and find undervalued talent.

  Statcast is the offspring of Pitchf/x, a nine-year-old system that shows the location and trajectories of every pitch and is a featured element of baseball’s immensely popular AtBat app.

  However, advancing beyond tracking the routes of pitches took time, and MLB Advanced Media, baseball’s Internet subsidiary, did not feel it could perfect Statcast until radar was added to track the path of batted balls.

  “Radar, which tracks missiles, had been prohibitively expensive, but as it became more commercially viable, we spent the money and had the system built in 2014,” said Bob Bowman, the president of MLB business and media. “Cameras worked for pitching, but batted balls are sprayed all around a park and we weren’t getting the accuracy we wanted.”

  Statcast tests began last year in three ballparks, which led to its occasional use in clips that were shown on MLB.com and on a live stream used during the All-Star weekend home run derby.

  Now MLB is ready to show off Statcast, and it started on Tuesday night on the MLB Network broadcast of the Cardinals-Nationals game from Washington, with Bob Costas, John Smoltz and Tom Verducci calling the game. Statcast’s myriad metrics — many of them describing defensive work — can be deployed live, but more likely they will be seen during replays.

  Statcast will be used exclusively on MLB Network for several weeks until it is made available to Fox, ESPN and TBS, and local regional sports networks. The data will start to flood AtBat.

  Viewers will soon hear a lot about perceived pitch velocity (actual speed distilled by the break of the ball); spin rate (more than 2,000rpm is good; 2,200 or more is terrific); first step (the amount of time between the bat’s making contact with the ball and a fielder making his first move to it); the launch rate of a home run; and projected home run distance (how far it would have gone if it did not hit something).

  Route efficiency — the directness of an outfielder’s path to a batted ball — “is one of the most exciting things,” MLB Advanced Media executive vice president Joe Inzerillo said. “We’ve seen 98-99 percent route efficiencies, which is incredible.”

  One hundred percent represents the ideal route.

  Examples of Statcast’s use in MLB Network’s studio programming have demonstrated its value. Five measurements were employed to describe a leaping catch by Houston outfielder George Springer last week that kept Leonys Martin of Texas from hitting a grand slam: first step, acceleration, maximum speed, distance covered and route efficiency (99.1 percent). Another two metrics (exit velocity and launch angle) detailed Martin’s swing, and three more (actual and perceived velocity and spin rate) tracked the pitch by Houston’s Tony Sipp.

  MLB Network’s use of Statcast during Tuesday’s game was judicious, and Smoltz provided necessary analysis and explanations, especially as he described the uses of perceived velocity.
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