NTT DATA Corporation and Rakuten Baseball announced Wednesday they will launch a virtual reality baseball coaching system in Japan that the Tohoku Rakuten Golden Eagles are scheduled to begin using next season. Could the VR system being used in Nippon Professional Baseball soon come to Major League Baseball?
Rakuten, the team that MLB pitchers Hisashi Iwakuma and Masahiro Tanaka once played for, will have the VR system give each player a batting simulation that can be experienced through the use of a head-mounted display. To the players, it will feel as if they are standing inside the batter’s box while having a complete 360-degree 3D view of a ball field.
The system can alter the pitches that the batters face through factors such as where they are standing in the batter’s box and the direction their heads faced during previous swings. This way, the player can received a more personalized practice since most players have different needs when it comes to what they need to tweak while batting. The headset displays video that is of high enough quality and ensures no dizziness or discomfort, according to the company.
“There are very few cases where VR technology is used on an ongoing basis for the training of professional athletes, Toshiyuki Hayashida, Head of Life Digital Division at NTT DATA, said in a statement. “With the collaboration of Rakuten Baseball, Inc., we’ve been able to produce a system whose quality is good enough to develop professional baseball players’ skills throughout the entire season, utilizing data that is constantly updated. We plan to offer the solution globally, in particular to Major League Baseball teams. NTT DATA will leverage its technology to drive this approach across other sports, spearheading a new collaboration between sport and technology,”
Creating a realistic situation for baseball players during batting practice can be a pretty difficult feat. Pitching machines can be repetitive, and having the players hit off their own pitchers can take up a lot of time and could put the pitcher in potential danger of an injury.
So to give the players a more realistic practice experience while helping them improve, Rakuten will begin using this equipment. If this equipment shows that it impacts the team’s batting ability when the next season rolls around, we may be seeing more of this type of practice with ball teams in other leagues around the globe.