StatCast in the MLB

The stats shown are for a batter with different traits who hits the ball at high speed. Photo Credit to MLB.com

That ball is long gone! It was crushed! This is a common thing to hear after a player crushes a home run during a baseball game. But how long did it really go? With the implementation of Statcast in the 2015 MLB season all of thee questions are easily answered. Baseball advanced media(BAM) took on  a 3 million dollar risk tracking players every move on the field. Flash forward to 2017 and we have one of the mos popular on field tracking devices in sports. These stats let some unappreciated players show off their skill set. This is not just for hitters though, Stat cast also measures pitch rates such as spin rate on a baseball, the velocity of the pitch, etc.
The longest home run in the 2017 Statcast season is Jake Lamb with a home run that measured 481 feet. Along with the distance another important stat that Statcast’s measures is exit velocity or how fast the ball hit off your bat, the hardest hit ball of the year came on New York Yankee’s Aaron Judge 435 foot home run that left the bat at a 119.6 exit velocity. Talk about heavy hitting, Now the next question most people have is how? How is major league baseball able to measure so many small statistics during the course of a game. The data is collected using optical cameras and radar equipment that are able to track locations and movements of the balls and players on the playing field. This is another example of technology taking over the sports world. Prior to Statcast players could go under the radar or underappreciated while in a slump, but looking at the numbers that are available now you can see that all it is, is the player is unlucky. They can be hitting the ball at 94 mph but it might be finding the other teams glove, with the information provided you can now see that this “player” should be getting out of his slump soon. One strong example of good hitting with bad luck would be in 2016 when Marlins slugger Giancarlo Stanton hit the hardest ball in Statcast history at 123.9 mph, you would think the result might be a home run right? Rather than a home run Giancarlo hit in a double play which is two outs.
Pitching is also calculated with the strongest pitch ever recorded came from Yankees Closer Aroldis Chapman and clocked in at 105.1 MPH. The fastest pitch speed on average from a starting pitcher is Noah Syndergaard of the New York Mets who’s pitches are clocked at an average of 98.7 MPH. The higher the spin rate and velocity of a pitch on average it would be that much harder to hit a pitch at that speed.
The two biggest innovations that have caught on from Statcast are exit velocity and pitch speed as these are the easiest two translate directly into the game. Players,teams and announcers have all caught on to the stat and use it in their everyday routine. One example is Arizona Diamond backs third baseman Jake Lamb who in a Sports Illustrated article said that when he was in his cold streak in 2016 he was watching a MLB show when he noticed that he was leading the league in exit velocity he realized he did not have to change a thing while he was struggling he was destroying the baseball he just couldn’t get it to pull through. So thanks to the new Statcast tracking a player like Lamb is able to realize that this is just a cold streak and he is doing everything right. Every team has also added an analytics team to their roster to study these traits and habits of players, Technology is big in baseball and is changing the way the game is viewed and played.
One website that can really help the analytics in baseball is fangraphs.com who track may different stats in baseball and use graphs and other helpful charts to give out information. With this they are able to project players and the trend they are moving in. Who said we would never use math again?