Capstone #5

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Blog Post #5

By Gavin 

Do you play or watch sports on TV, and do you like using your phone, your Ipad, your computer, basically anything that involves technology? Well if you do then you are really going to enjoy reading this, because this essay is all about how technology has affected baseball. There are many ways that technology is impacting our lives, but from a sports fan point of view we can learn this through something we all love, Baseball! Today I am going to tell you about two different ways that technology has changed the game. One of them is it has changed the way the game is played, another is it has changed how people scout players. Overall technology has made the game better in some ways but, also worse in others.

You might be wondering how has technology changed the game? Well it has through Statcast. Statcast is one of many organizations that track everything players do. What I mean by this is Statcast tracks, and keeps all of the players “Stats” on an online website. It tracks everything from players batting averages to a players odds of scoring if they get a leadoff double. Click on the link below to see an example of Statcast being used in a real life game. https://www.mlb.com/news/statcast-facts-for-al-wild-card-game-c257153154 Isn’t this so cool, Statcast can do all this in a blink of an eye! Todd Zeile, a former baseball player who now is an analyst for SNY told me in an interview that he thinks when used Statcast works effectively as a tool in some ways, but also is just added information to give people something to talk about. I totally agree because not only does statcast help get baseball to be more interesting for some people but also teams can use Statcast also as a tool for many things. One of which is the Shift now this is how technology has affected the game, coaches can go onto Statcast and one of the Stats that it shows is hitting tendencies. This is important because teams can look at this and say, “Okay so Bryce Harper hits it to the left side 55% of the time. We must ‘shift’ to the left side every time he gets up.” This is how teams figure out where to stand in the field. Of course though none of this could be possible without technology. However does the shift make the game less exciting? I mean from a fans stand point it gets boring when it is just out, after out, after out, because of the shift. A lot of people argue that the game is to slow and boring so the shift should be banned. Here is another way it is used as a tool, when teams are debating what reliever and or pitcher should go in they can use Statcast. It may sound crazy but yes teams can look at who is up next and from this can decide which pitcher would have an easier time facing the batters. They can do this because of a couple different Stats. One is career against Righties/Lefties so if a bunch of righties are up the team will probably put in the guy that is better against righties, another stat, shows teams which pitcher is better in a day game or night game, teams can also use so much more stats to do this. I am not going to tell you everything that is made possible by Statcast because, I would be here for hours but, you get the point.

After reading that paragraph I think you get the idea of how technology has changed scouting, but actually teams use a different type of technology to scout. Have you ever heard coaches say, to prepare for the next game we are going to spend a lot of time in the film room? Well if you haven’t I will tell you what the ‘film room’ is. It is where teams go and scout out the team they are playing next using replays of the teams games. However there is normally more action and runs during the beginning of the season because, teams don’t have enough resources to have a scouting report yet. So you could say that replay has made the game less exciting just like Statcast. Of course though this would not be a thing without the technology in cameras. There is also a different kind of scouting that has been affected by technology. This kind of scouting is when teams ‘scout’ out college players to see who should be drafted. Take Prince Fielder as an example, does he look like a baseball player to you? Well from all of the replays and scouting reports teams quickly figured out that he was going to be great. Guess what as someone who was thought of as, “overweight” Prince Fielder ended up doing a lot of great things in his career. One of which is WINNING ALL STAR GAME MVP! Overall technology has made life easier for scouts in many ways.

All in all technology has made the game better in some ways but, also worse in others. Technology has made it easier for coaches to scout, but also made the game less exciting and boring for fans. Even Tood Ziele says that baseball is way to slow.  In my opinion technology is making the game better for players and coaches but, is making the game worse for fans.

 

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