Nothing beats that new software smell. You know, where some vendor has put on a fireworks show via TEAMs/ZOOM to a bunch of decisionmakers and after the show, everyone happy-claps themselves on the back about how great that application is and how it will improve whatever problem the vendor said existed and their software resolved. Over at the Wrigley Building, Fergie, the pitching coach, determined the current pitching tracking software was insufficient for building a high-quality pitching staff. Over the past few years, tracking the type of pitches in a particular player’s arsenal has started to be secondary data. Fergie said he needed something that could track new data points like spin rate, pitch break, and velocity as well as older metrics like swing/miss, leftie/ right splits, and home/away splits. Fergie investigated various software and found a pitch tracking tool called PitchTrax®. While older, it was hooked into the MLB pitch database. This connection allowed Fergie to enter real-time data about his pitchers as well as draw upon batter real-time stats allowing Fergie to make in-game decisions based on his pitcher vs batter with the most up-to-date data. If Marcus Stroman was pitching against Yadier Molina, Fergie could immediately pull up Yadier’s history against right-handed pitchers and let Marcus know a heavy dose of sliders will retire Yadier with no problem.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY DR. MIKE ESSIG IN THE 2022 WINTER EDITION OF GAMING & LEISURE MAGAZINE.