USA Today: Innovation vs. invasion of privacy: MLB wearable technology battle looms

By: Mike Vorkunov

At the All-Star Game this July, Dellin Betances, theNew York Yankees’ redoubtable closer, threw 15 pitches. While viewers at home and at the stadium could track their location and their velocity, the more intriguing data about them was caught in a chip attached to the black sleeve enveloping Betances’ right arm.

For the first and, so far, only time this season, the pitcher was wearing a Motus sleeve in a live game. It tracked and captured Betances’ arm angles, could account for possible fatigue, and counted the force on his ulnar collateral ligament by measuring the valgus torque on his right elbow. When Betances completed his outing and wanted to review the information, it was all there on his iPhone, downloaded onto an app.

This is the present and very much the future of the sport and technology. While the larger baseball community is just now understanding how expansive the Big Data era has become and how closely every facet of the game is being logged and benchmarked, the search for new and better technology has already moved on. Baseball isn’t independent of Moore’s Law, either.

“Statcast,” Gerrit Cole, the Pirates pitcher, said, “has blown the door open.”

This season, Major League Baseball allowed wearable technology on the field during games for the first time. Only two products were given clearance: the Zephyr Bioharness, which measures heart rate and breathing, and the Motus sleeve. While the inroads -- or intrusion, depending on one’s perspective -- are inevitable, it still raises interesting and difficult quandaries.

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