Just as many people could not imagine life before smartphones, many baseball fans can’t imagine the sport before the so-called “Statcast Era.”
Love it or hate it — and there are plenty of people on both sides of the fence — Statcast has changed the way reporters cover the sport, the way fans watch games, and even the way GMs and managers build their teams.
And all those analytics, from easily understandable stats such as exit velocities and projected home run distance down to more arcane measurements (a pitcher’s “spin axis”), have only been around a few years.
Ten years, to be exact.
The Athletic did a feature this week on how Statcast has changed the sport, and notes that, while the first development of the system began in 2011, “a primitive version of Statcast debuted at the 2014 Home Run Derby.”
Among highlights from the feature:
• MLB launched the Statcast effort in 2011 under a veil of secrecy featuring non-disclosure agreements and more. The Times reported, “Two Brazilians who barely understood baseball created a data engine — code name “black box,” because no one else knew how it worked — upon which would be built the structural bones of Statcast.”
• There was some apprehension among Statcast pioneers that the feat might be too difficult. Joe Inzerillo, who led MLB’s multimedia efforts at the time, said, “We didn’t want to do something people would historically look at and say, ‘Oh my God. What were they thinking?’ If we couldn’t measure it accurately, if it wasn’t scientific, we didn’t want to put it out.”
• After a test run at three stadiums in 2014, Statcast went live in 2015. Those involved in the effort knew the new tech had arrived when a hitter said he was working on improving his launch angle.
And that’s where the controversy begins. Many fans, and even MLB players and managers, have complained that the emphasis on analytics is hurting the sport. For example, basketball analyst Dick Vitale recently posted on X that he could not believe how bad MLB batting averages have gotten (the league average is .243, tied for the lowest mark since 1967). Vitale questioned how this had happened, and drew an avalanche of responses from fans, many blaming the emphasis on launch angle and other Statcast metrics, for the decline in hitting.
Also, while it’s sometimes fun to know a hitter smacked a home run with an exit velocity of 117.4 mph, some fans think there’s too much emphasis on those numbers. In late May, after Pittsburgh Pirates shortstop Oneil Cruz became the talk of baseball for having two hits top 120 mph in a game, Michael Wilbon ranted on Pardon the Interruption.
“It angers me,” Wilbon said. “He’s a .260 hitter, so why do I care about the exit velo? I don’t, and so I guess people need this to become interested and more fascinated and go, ‘Oh wow.’ Not only do I not go, ‘oh wow,’ it has started the ruination of watching sports for me, numbers like this put up on the screen repeatedly, day in, day out.”
So Wilbon won’t be celebrating Statcast’s 10th anniversary. Some fans have also gone overboard in their contempt for Statcast. One fan recently sparked a discussion on X after he claimed that Statcast and analytics are a progressive-liberal conspiracy to ruin the game.
the far left sabermetric nerds obsessed with exit velocity and launch angle have ruined the game.
— The Boz (@ChrisBzozowski) July 4, 2024
Most fans, however, seem to appreciate knowing the numbers behind the magic they see on the field.
Ronald Acuña Jr crushes a home run with a 121.2 mph exit velocity! It’s the hardest-hit ball in MLB this season. pic.twitter.com/1SkNcaGRgm
— The Comeback (@thecomeback) September 3, 2023
