MLB Statcast is going to be absurdly awesome (hopefully)

Originally posted 7/27/14.

Check this out:  This is a demo of the new MLB Statcast  technology.  You can see a map of Mike Trout’s route around the bases during his triple in the All-Star Game, and a tracker of a Giancarlo Stanton home run in the Home Run Derby.

The amount of data that will be produced is staggering.  It truly has the potential to revolutionize baseball analytics.

Specifically, the evaluation of defense could change radically. This is convenient because many critics of advanced baseball analytics today draw their arguments from the evaluation of player defense.  Critics note how the measurable events we rely on are currently limited to things like errors, and how often a player advances from 1st to 3rd base on a single. Not very comprehensive. Well, Statcast can track players’ initial starting positions, reaction time, acceleration, top velocity, route efficiency and probably more.  Reams and reams of data will be produced about every single play, of every single game. The result could be a gigantic step forward in terms of reliability of historical and forecasted defensive performance.

My understanding is that we are apparently at least a year away from the tech being rolled-out, and there are questions about how much of the data will be publicly available, if any. If I had to guess, I would think MLB will try to roll this out in a way that maximizes their profits, which means less available data for the average fan.  But I hope I’m wrong about that. This technology has the potential to not quench the analyst world’s thirst for information but also change the way the average fan witnesses the game of baseball. It’s stunning.