Fans will never watch baseball the same way again.
MLB Statcast was used for the first time this Tuesday on MLB Network during the St. Louis Cardinals vs. Washington Nationals game.
Statcast is a data driven technology that tracks everything that happens on the field and allows the game to be analyzed in further detail during a broadcast. It uses a series of cameras and radars to map the movements of the players and ball on the field. Some of the metrics it can capture are the speed of a player, route efficiency to a fly ball, distance of a home run ball, and the speed of a base runner’s first step.
The first #Statcast broadcast in @MLBNetwork history ended in #walkoff fashion: http://t.co/EbZlO7lrul pic.twitter.com/nSATC6vuWJ
— MLB (@MLB) April 22, 2015
Broadcasters use a blend of graphics and data points to show fans those tiny details we normally would not know of that change the game. In Tuesday’s game Statcast showed viewers that Jon Jay’s first step to a fly ball took .3 seconds, the spin rate of Drew Storen’s fastball is 3,540 rpm, and Kolten Wong’s average running speed to first base was just under 20 mph.
Before the @Nationals walked off, @jonjayU made an amazing, game-saving grab: http://t.co/7cEo6Xij0n #Statcast pic.twitter.com/WS3mVmsxnz
— #Statcast (@statcast) April 22, 2015
The Statcast technology is available in all 30 baseball stadiums and will see expanded use in this year’s regular season.
You can see Statcast in action from Tuesday’s game in the video section of MLB.com
And if you were wondering, Washington won on a walk-off in extra innings. Not a bad game to debut new technology.