Batting cage with OptiTrack motion capture system at Driveline Baseball. (Marques Gagner)
With every passing season, technology continues to infuse Major League Baseball and, if anything, that process accelerated over the off-season. As the dust settles after Opening Day, SportTechie presents a roundup of the key MLB tech storylines to watch in 2019.
Player Performance Monitoring
Technology is becoming a central part of player development and performance evaluation in modern baseball. The post-Moneyball era introduced innovative statistical methods to analyze and interpret existing stats for additional meaning, but technology is providing new avenues to assess and develop both general talent and specific skills.
Every club uses some combination of the leading baseball tech products: Rapsodo hitting and pitching monitors, Edgertronic high-speed cameras, Blast Motion and Diamond Kinetics bat sensors, K-Motion biomechanical vests, HitTrax tracker, KinaTrax motion capture, and more. The biggest private training facilities all employ technology as core to their missions, and many of previously independent coaches are getting hired by MLB organizations.
Atlantic League Testing
Though MLB commissioner Rob Manfred downplayed the imminence of robot umpires in the majors at SportTechie’s State Of The Industry conference in February, MLB has embarked on an innovative agreement with the Atlantic League to use the independent circuit as a laboratory to test new rules. One of the most interesting facets of that partnership is the testing of a technology assisted strike zone. MLB is installing TrackMan radars—the same ball-tracking component used in Statcast—in every Atlantic League ballpark to help umpires call balls and strikes.
Season of Sports Betting
The Supreme Court struck down PASPA last May, making yesterday the first Opening Day in which sports betting was legal beyond Nevada. This season is also the formal start of MLB’s relationship with MGM Resorts as its first official gaming partner. That agreement includes a license to use official data, with a small portion of the Statcast-generated tracking data provided exclusively. MLB has also teamed with Sportradar on a data distribution agreement and has asked clubs to submit lineups to the league office 15 minutes prior to making them public as an apparent betting integrity safeguard.
Crackdown on Tech-Enabled Sign Stealing
MLB has implemented more stringent regulations about camera placement in the ballpark and access to certain video streams, as first reported by Sports Illustrated. Several clubs were thought to be using technology to steal signs—which is explicitly prohibited by league rules—and efforts to thwart sign-stealing slowed the pace of play.
Manfred discussed the rationale for this at last month’s State Of The Industry conference, describing this as “unintended consequences” stemming from the addition of replay. MLB installed video review centers close to each dugout in every ballpark to aid replay decisions, and some organizations added additional cameras for tactical reasons—both of which ultimately got exploited for other uses.
“As sometimes is the case, when the technology’s there for replay or the technology is there for a legitimate evaluation of player performance reason, sometimes it can veer off in the wrong direction,” Manfred said. “We think that technology closer to the field of play, in general, is a good thing. We think we need to regulate it in a way to make sure no one’s veering off in the wrong path.”
One trial apparently underway for consideration in future seasons is a wrist-worn pitcher-and-catcher communication system, as first reported by the Washington Post. Each can signal pitch type and location and transmit the info back and forth.
DAZN Streaming Deal
MLB carved out a new broadcast rights package for DAZN beginning this season. The streaming service will carry a six-hour, live whip-around program every night during the year. The personality-driven studio show will hope to lure new subscribers to DAZN, which launched in the U.S. in 2018 with boxing and MMA rights.
Esports Ambitions
At SOTI, Manfred acknowledged that esports have been “a weak spot” for MLB but hinted very strongly that would change soon. “It is a real priority for us going forward,” he said. “It’s tough to say more than this, but I’m pretty confident, in 2019, we’re going to have a really nice announcement in that space.”
MLB released a VR Home Run Derby game in 2018 and staged tournaments at the All-Star Game Fan Fest and Little League World Series.
Future of Fox Regional Sports Networks
The third and final round of bids for the 21 Fox-owned regional sports networks up for sale are due Apr. 15. MLB is one of the four remaining interested parties, according to Fox Business. Those RSNs hold the local broadcast rights for 14 MLB clubs.
“Our approach to media has been to preserve or enhance our ability to control our own destiny,” Manfred said at SOTI. “I think that the need to control your own destiny becomes even more acute in periods of change.”
