Major League Baseball Advanced Media (MLBAM) are primarily known as the wonderful company that provides us with MLB.TV, but their remit extends further into developing innovative technology to allow for greater insights into the game.
Along those lines, they made an exciting announcement on Saturday regarding plans to introduce equipment into every MLB ballpark during 2014 that will allow every aspect of every play to be measured and analysed.
The new infrastructure is designed to facilitate the collection of huge swathes of data that can be used by teams, broadcasters and – potentially – fans to analyse the game in a way that has never been possible before.
Fans will be able to gain a greater understanding of the game and an even greater appreciation of the skills of the players involved, all feeding into the eternal pastime of debating the merits of individual players in comparison with each other. Which pitcher has the sharpest bending curveball? Which outfielder takes the best route to flyballs? The data will not conclusively answer such questions but will allow all involved in the debate to have more ammunition to add to their argument.
The thirst for knowledge in sports is becoming all consuming. In rugby, it’s now common for jerseys to have a small rectangular patch on the back where GPS units are inserted to allow teams to benefit from all manner of GPS tracking data, whilst the traditionally stat-averse world of football is quietly embracing something of a data revolution behind the scenes.
In both case, fans don’t tend to see or benefit from most of this work as it is either not made available at all or only in a cut-down, controlled form (such as the FourFourTwo StatsZone).
In contrast, baseball is much more open about getting data out there. For example, MLBAM’s existing Pitchf/x technology, that provides lots of data about pitching, is released in a way that allows those with the relevant skills to slice and dice the data in innovative ways, such as via the Brooks Baseball website.
Based on the initial video, the data that will be captured has the potential to really enhance the fan experience of watching games on TV, subject to broadcasters embracing it fully (which they surely will).
Any wider developments will depend on how openly the data will be available for fans to play with. There’s no firm commitment to making this new stream of data fully available. Decisions on this will go a long way to determining just how big a development this could be for fans in enjoying and understanding the game.
