THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

As much as this would help in figuring out defensive alignments in baseball and how players track balls, it would be incredibly valuable in basketball to have a record of where everyone is on the court when a given event happens.

God that would be awesome.

There’s no question that hockey gets the biggest benefit, followed by football, basketball, then baseball.

Hmm… sounds like the groundwork for Sportvision to develop fieldF/X, including our much sought after improvement in data on fielder positioning that wouldn’t require the technology. They also do stuff like this in NASCAR.

How accurate is the positioning data on the GPS units that are used in other sports like hockey and horse racing?  The one I have doesn’t work too well indoors.  Would also be nice to telemeter the baseball, and have all the real-time player GPS positioning data as well as the baseball data fed into an acquisition system which could both record the data for post game/play analysis and display real-time defensive metrics.  The biggest obstacle might be how to fit a baseball with a TM transmitter and sensors without effecting the integrity of the ball.  I’m sure some defense contractor could figure it out and charge a couple thousand per ball.
vr, Xei

#4 I work in a field theat uses GPS data.  The accuracy depends on if you use satellites to get the GPS positions or set up a local (stadium) system.

#5. So which is more accurate and what is the accuracy rate?
vr, Xei

Satellite GPS - 1 to 10 meters to actual location on earth, but objects are usually off by the same amount.

Setting up a local system can get you within 4 cm, but the unit we install is quite large (link on name - image on right).

"The biggest obstacle might be how to fit a baseball with a TM transmitter and sensors without effecting the integrity of the ball. “

The NHL used to have the FoxTrax puck. I don’t seem to remember anyone complaining about the integrity of the puck.  It was also pretty accurate (the puck was always in the middle of this floating blue blob on the screen).

I must qualify this post with the fact that I have never played hockey, other than air hockey.  But I would imagine the integrity of a baseball could be messed up easier than that of a hockey puck by messing with the innards of the ball/puck.  You would have to keep the same weight and elasticity and harden any sensors and transmitters to withstand the force of being swatted by the likes of David Ortiz.  I would think such a ball would be fairly expensive and the MLB might ask fans to give the ball back if hit into the stands.  vr, Xei

Pucks are hit about as hard as baseballs.  Plenty go in the stands as well.

Not only that, but pucks are hit far more often.  In baseball, you have about 80 contacted balls per game more or less.  In hockey, you have about as many shots (some hit the boards, not the goalie’s glove) plus all those passes (though obviously not hit as hard). 

So, the objections you have in baseball applies to hockey, and in hockey, they didn’t seem to have an issue with the expensive pucks.

How many hockey pucks are used per game, and how many baseballs per game?  Seems like they throw out baseballs if the ball goes in the dirt.  Wonder what the force on the core of a baseball vs core of a hockey puck is.  What kind of sensor/xmitter is/was in a hockey puck?  Is that the glowing light they used to put on the puck during telecasts?
vr, Xei

Sportvision is working on easier, cheaper systems for tracking both the ball and players.  The problem for all these improvements is getting someone to pay the costs when there is only a very marginal improvement in the usefulness of the information obtained.

Re Xeifrank #11: I had the privilege of talking with Ken Milnes at Sportvision about the hockey pucks they made for Fox and the NHL and seeing one that he had on his desk.  They used an array of infrared emitting diodes in the puck.  The glowing light was an effect added to the video stream.

As Peter said, the problem is not technology, it’s getting the buy-in to implement a system, although I think we are headed in that direction based on what I have seen, hopefully sooner rather than later, but I think it is inevitable at some point.

ESPN.com uses a similar type of thing in tracking soccer matches. They show the average position of every player and where on the field they were most active for every major match that gets played. Very cool for analyzing tactics and formations. I don’t see any reason they couldn’t do it for baseball.

For some reason, it seems that skiing, soccer, and horse racing have an easier time of creating the cost/benefit analysis for this than the 4 sports that create 20 billion$ in revenues.  Weird…