The Royals will soon “have their own in-house metrics” following the installation of a Sportvision Fieldf/x system at Kauffman Stadium, according to Rustin Dodd of the K.C. STAR. The company installed a “motion-capture system that uses four cameras to track every movement on a baseball field.” Royals Dir of Baseball Administration Jin Wong said, “It’ll blow away everything that is currently out there on defense.” The team will first have to “sift through the ocean of data, millions of numbers and measurements.” The idea will be “to create some in-house metrics that will better quantify defense.” Wong said, “It’s gonna be much more definitive in terms of what it can tell you about players’ movements, players’ reaction. … It can tell you a lot about range. It can tell you how fast a runner goes first to third.” MLB in '07 “installed Pitchf/x systems in stadiums throughout baseball,” which, as a predecessor to Fieldf/x, “measures velocities and trajectories of every pitch -- and delivers the information to the public in the form of MLB.com’s Gameday feature.” Royals officials confirmed that MLB this time around “will be hoarding the Fieldf/x data to itself.” The Royals are “one of the first teams to have the technology installed because of owner David Glass’s role as chairman of MLB Advanced Media.” But soon, the data “could be in every major-league stadium.” Competition among teams will be “a race to see who can best utilize the data” (K.C. STAR, 3/31).
