Okay, brace yourself. This is going to be of the more serious post variety. I might make a few smartass comments, but this won’t be of the sarcastic variety. A story in today’s New York Times caught my attention. The same company that managed to put the yellow first-down line on tv screens for football games has developed software that records the exact speed and location of the ball and every player on a baseball field. Why is this important and why will anyone other than Nate Silver or Billy Beane give a damn?
Of all of the sports, baseball has been the most obsessed with statistics. An entire science exists due to the need to keep statistics in baseball and the concept of a box score started in baseball. Although position players are rated on how many of the five “tools” they have (hit for power, hit for average, throwing accuracy/strength, speed and defense), the last two areas are really measured by statistics,fielding percentage (or number of putouts/number of chances) and stolen bases that don’t capture the true essence of the game. So capturing all of the speed and location information is really crucial. Let me explain.
Since I am not a major league baseball player, nor good enough to actually play on an adult baseball team, I play slow-pitch softball team. Although I have pretty good speed, I have lower back, hip and IT band problems, so I don’t have the quickest first step, but after I get going, I’m pretty fast. And although I have pretty good range in the infield, I have a weak arm, so I can’t just nail a runner at first from ten feet behind the third base bag unless they are really slow. But I am smarter than the average bear and know how to play angles, anticipate hops and even where to position myself given my inherent abilities (or inabilities).
So take my game on Wednesday night as an example of where stats would be misleading. In my second at bat, I hit a ground ball to the shortstop who made a nice play getting to ball, but didn’t have a great arm and I beat out the throw to first, but just barely. Had this been a high school baseball game, a scout watching would have felt like I wasn’t very fast because a faster player would have beaten it out by several steps. And certainly if this was baseball, I wouldn’t be putting up great steals numbers because I don’t have the explosive first step. But the next play, I easily made it from first to third on sharply hit single to center, where most players would have stopped at second or gotten gunned down at third. The difference is that once I get going, my back doesn’t bother me and my speed, plus knowing the angle to take around second base gets me there. This new system would account for that and demonstrate that I was actually pretty darn fast.
Let’s use that same game from a defensive perspective. The team we played was pretty weak and short-handed. They also tended to hit almost everything on the ground to third base, which is where I was playing. There were runners on first and second, one out and a hitter with poor speed and not much pop at the plate. So I played about even with the bag, but not crowding the line, yet not wanting to be too far away to make the force play. The play ends up being a weak grounder to third base right on the line, which I quickly get to, scoop up, turn, tag the bag and then proceed to airmail over first base trying to get the double play, (I was off balance, my momentum took me past the bag and I had to hurry). So on paper, you would see a putout and two-base throwing error and a scout my say that I have a weak and inaccurate arm and my error would show up in the box score. But the only reason I even had a play at first (aside from a painfully slow runner) is because I got to the ball really quickly (combo of speed and angle). So someone without the speed or knowledge would never have even tried to make the play at first because the runner would be nearly at first base by the time they tagged third.
So yes, they will never put these cameras in for beer-league softball games. And no, I doubt the little league teams, even the elite leagues will have this. But what it will likely do is affect the way players are evaluated and valued (figuratively and literally) at all levels. But it makes me feel better and when I preach to my son Roberto the importance of doing the little things that don’t show up in the box score, there is actually merit behind this and it’s not just to make up for a lack of athleticism. Same actually goes for defense in basketball, per a great Michael Lewis article on Shane Battier a few months ago.
The first system is being used in San Francisco this year and expect to see it rolled out across MLB in the near future. I can’t wait to see the results.
Filed under: Sports Tagged: | baseball, Sports, statistics
