TECHNOLOGY
Baseball has never been a simple sport and now , it ’ s become an even more complicated science .
In the early days of Babe Ruth and Willie Mays , baseball managers followed a handful of truths to strategize a win : use right-handed pitchers against right-handed batters , left-handed pitchers against lefthanded batters , don ’ t hold the runner at first with two outs and a left-handed batter , and no left-handers at infield positions except for first base .
Defensively , it was also just as simple . Depending on if the batter was right- or left-handed , the shortstop would shift his position to either side of the second base .
Over time , the center fielder began to move his position , too – toward the right field while the right fielder guarded the line and vice versa during pitches . Gloves also got bigger .
The year 1964 saw the biggest defensive shift when Cleveland manager Lou Boudreau moved his shortstop to the right of second base against the legendary Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox . Since then , the sport has never been the same .
Defensive shifting has become “ epidemic ” in the world of baseball , according to the Wall Street Journal , with Major League teams “ shifting ” 8,134 times last year , compared to just 2,357 times in 2011 .
The approach to enhance optimal positioning on the field , however , is no longer being relied upon by intuitive hunches or reviews of previous games ; rather , baseball has turned to big data to predict the best solution based on elements of a specific game . One reason why defensive shifts are taking over the field is because of the sport ’ s transition to better technology . Major League Baseball has figured out what it needs to be successful and is taking every measure to obtain that success : clusters of cameras that measure depth and movement , computerimaging , and software that track the movements of players and the ball . Today , with access to so much data , the cost-benefit analysis is making teams play the odds . “ If you ’ re not going to embrace some of this stuff ,
20 December 2014