It’s that magical time of year where the smell of freshly cut grass and ballpark food mix to trigger nostalgic memories in the minds of baseball fans. Yes, the 2016 MLB season is underway and players are lacing up their cleats, working off the inevitable offseason rust and breaking out the wearables that were just approved by Major League Baseball to be worn during games.
Get The Latest MLB Tech News In Your Inbox!
In a huge pro-tech decision the league’s rule committee has decided to approve two wearables that players can wear during games. The wearables are the motusBASEBALL sensor which can help teams quantitatively measure arm exertion and stress and the Zephyr Bioharness, a chest strap that will capture the physiological data of a player.
At this point these are the only two league-approved wearables for in-game use. Meaning, traditional wearables like Fitbit, Polar, Jawbone, Garmin, etc. can still not be worn by players during games.
With the motusBASEBALL sensor the goal will be to help teams detect possible arm injuries before they happen.
The Motus wearable is a compression sleeve worn on the throwing forearm. In the corresponding app, data is recorded and visualized that shows measurements of peak stress on the UCL (the ligament, that when torn, leads to Tommy John Surgery) during every pitch and uses Motus’ proprietary workload algorithm to help pitchers avoid overuse injuries.
One issue still remaining in detecting a pitcher’s arm stress is that the league will not allow the data from these wearables to be transmitted during games. Teams will have to wait until the game has concluded to download the results. Which seems a bit short-sited as it makes sense that teams could certainly use data during games to monitor a pitcher’s arm stress levels and therefore help the coaching staff with important decisions in real-time.
From a player’s union perspective there could be privacy concerns with gathering this in-game data but the rule’s committee made it clear that the data can only be used internally and each player will have complete transparency and access to their personal data.
While Zephyr and Motus are the only two companies with approved devices for in-game use, Blast Motion and Diamond Kinetics also had their swing sensors green-lighted by the committee for pre-game and training sessions.
This is a very telling tech-friendly move by what many consider to be one of the more traditional professional leagues. So it will be interesting to see if other leagues around the country and world start to follow Major League Baseball’s lead and incorporate wearables into their sports.