Baseball Finds the Holy Grail for Measuring Defense (Again)
At the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference over the weekend in Boston, Major League Baseball Advanced Media announced the rollout of a new system for measuring everything from a fielder’s acceleration toward the ball to the efficiency of his route to the distance he covers. The yet-to-be-named system was tested at Citi Field in New York last season and will be installed there and at Miller Park in Milwaukee and Target Field in Minnesota this year.
“This is going to be pretty exciting,” MLB Advanced Media Chief Executive Officer Bob Bowman said at Sloan. “We think it’s going to change the way we argue about the game, but we don’t think it’s going to settle any debates. We hope it starts more.” The league operates Advanced Media (or BAM, for short) as the unified technology wing of its 30 teams. The early returns on the new player-tracking system, seen below in the breakdown of a spectacular catch by Jason Heyward of the Atlanta Braves, are pretty thrilling (for people who get their thrills from baseball stats).