It's amazing what's possible today. The announcement that PG and TrackMan have entered a partnership could turn out to be pretty significant over time.
Here's a summary of Trackman, for those who, like me, hadn't heard of it (even though 17 MLB organizations are apparently already using it):
- Military-grade 3-D Doppler radar measurement system
- Sample rate of 48,000 measurements per second
- Precisely measures the location, spin, angles, velocity and trajectory of a ball in flight
- Radar sits high behind home plate
- Operator used computer attached or networked to radar to tag game results
To think that technology developed to track missiles is now being used to measure the spin of a curve ball, the speed and trajectory of a ball off the bat, and 25 other things ... again, to me anyway, is just mind boggling. I'm betting it'll spawn a whole slew of new data that Moneyball advocates in particular will lock onto.
They had Trackman set up on five fields in Jupiter, and also had a cage set up where players hit in the Prime 9 Challenge. JP thought it was really cool (He actually finished in top 3 in wood bat, and won a Louisville Slugger MLB Prime birch bat!)
Here's Baseball America's article on the partnership:
http://www.baseballamerica.com...nology-to-showcases/
And here's their article on the top in-game numbers over the course of the tournament:
http://www.baseballamerica.com...bat-trackman-tables/