The team at Grid Sports have released a system that simply goes by the name of ‘The Grid’, that is unlike any other sort of technology we have seen in the sport of baseball. Two products have been introduced, one being specific to pitching, and the other to hitting.
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Known as ‘The Grid Pitching System’, the first product was designed by a team of aerospace engineers and professional pitchers. The system’s primary tool is the use of optical lasers that are able to capture speed, break, trajectory and deceleration. Coupled with a hi-speed, high-definition video feed, the system is able to build its analysis through viewing body movement and comparing it to the metrics of the pitch itself.
Since the technology is able to monitor both the ball and body movement, Grid Sports claims that their system displays accuracy that we’ve never seen before with traditional GPS technology. We have seen many existing systems focus on either throwing technique or the ball once it leaves the hand, but ‘The Grid’ measures it all.
Similarly to the pitching system, ‘The Grid Hitting System’ uses a set of optical lasers as well as a video feed to analyse a hitter and their swing. The lasers analyse the entry and exit point of the ball, capturing metrics like distance and trajectory of the hit, as well as hit velocity and provides a spray chart of the hitter’s sessions.
Just like the pitching system, the hitting system is also coupled with a video feed that analyses the body movement and compares the swinging action to the hit itself. The system also provides pre-programmed workouts and game modes that are designed to simulate in-game situations.
While these systems definitely aren’t the first piece of technology angled at enhancing performance in baseball, they have taken the best of both worlds and built them into one surprisingly simple product. We are used to seeing systems come out that either analyse the ball and all of its metrics, or the athlete themselves, to analyse the swing or pitch action. This system combines the two, and depending on the strength of the software, should make all of the data much more accurate.