The State of F/X: MLB.com Gameday and Baseball Analysis Improves

The work many folks have been doing with PITCHf/x has been great. It's getting better.

This weekend was the 1st Annual PITCHf/x Summit. We all hope we'll have a 2nd one, too. So many topics were discussed, it will be difficult to put it all together, but I'm going to try.

The event kicked-off Saturday May 11 at the Westin on Market in San Francisco, just a half mile from AT&T Park. I arrived Friday and had the pleasure of attending the game with Greg Rybarczyk of Hit Tracker. While folks like me analyze, Greg innovates. We were both bemused by the amount of drunk late-teen/early-twenties in the left-field bleachers. No, we're not grumpy old men, this was like nothing I've quite seen before, in terms of early drunkenness and fighting. I've been to the bleachers in Wrigley, the Blue Seats in Madison Square Garden, and many points between. Friday night was certainly new for me. As a matter of fact, the night ended tragically, when a teenager was killed after striking his head on the concrete, following an alleged punch from behind. The deadly blow was allegedly dealt by another teenager. Both had graduated from local high schools in the past couple of years. This is the only black mark on what otherwise was a great weekend, which I enjoyed beyond my own expectations. 

Blissfully ignorant of Friday's tragedy (Greg left a comment on Cubs f/x, telling me what happened, Sunday night), we had a great time at the conference, and all overcame our guilt of being at a baseball conference on Mother's Day. Mothers with broadband connections could tune-in on-line, however.

Much of the discussion, as you can imagine, was highly technical. Math, aerodynamics, high energy physics software applications, databases, scripting languages, user interface, human factors, neural networks, data correction algorithms, lens distortion, camera characteristics, and my talk on creative uses of the data. Decidedly non-technical, I hope I provided an informative and entertaining look at the world of PFX. But, probably not. You can see for yourself, as the presentations are available on-line, and, eventually, a down-loadable DVD might be available, too.

Matt Lentzner had a baseball handy throughout, and some thought provoking innovations on arm slot and pitch identification. This is a topic of significant interest to me. At the ballgame Saturday, I got nicely sunburned while Matt, Alan Nathan and I discussed the matter, and Matt and Alan both used the baseball to explain and explore ideas. Wisely, I stayed on the bench, hand on beverage. Matt presented, at the last minute, his related ideas on pitch break distribution as a tool to find arm slots, and, in a few quick slides, showed his suggestions on how to show pitch movement in Gameday to make it more intuitive to the casual fan. The MLBAM guys were very interested, and a very good discussion followed.

You're currently logged into Facebook

Do you want to share your Bleacher Report activity on Facebook?