Pete Rose was among baseball’s greatest hitters. His philosophy was simple: See the ball, hit the ball.
In today’s game, that’s changed. Now it's: See the ball, hit the ball, review the videotape.
Baseball has gone high tech. And we’re not just talking about a few scouts scattered behind home plate holding radar guns.
Teams now employ an array of high-speed cameras and other sophisticated video gear to gather data on every pitch and every swing in every game by every player.
That includes the Wichita Wind Surge, which opens its season next week at Riverfront Stadium.
Chase Carder is in his third season as coordinator of baseball technology for the team.
He was a center fielder in junior college before injuries ended his career. So, he went to the University of Tennessee and got a business tech degree in 2018.
Carder now watches Wind Surge games in a room with six video screens inside Riverfront Stadium, monitoring the data pouring in.
“We get the spin rate, the horizontal-vertical movement on a pitch, velo (velocity),” he said about the data gathered on pitchers.
“And then for our hitters, like the exit velo, launch angle, distance, and then obviously the strike zone’s still important,” he added. “So we know if we’re throwing strikes and if our hitters are making good swing decisions.”
The information collected by Carder and two other employees who work home games is passed along to a sports science team, which is part of the Minnesota Twins’ organization. It works with the Wind Surge coaching staff to put together a development plan for each player.
Because, Carder said, developing players — not winning — is the Wind Surge’s primary goal.
“We have player plan goals for all of our guys on things that we think they need to improve upon to get from the Double-A level up into the bigs and then stick as a big leaguer,” Carder said from Fort Myers, Florida, where he was gathering data on players in the Minnesota Twins’ organization during spring training.
Teams also collect data on opposing players as well. Carder said that’s used to create scouting reports on pitchers and hitters the Wind Surge will face during the season.
“So using all this data … also helps benefit our guys because (scouting reports) kind of start at our level, really trying to get them familiarized with the scouting report side of things,” said Carder, who travels with the team to collect data on the road.
“Once you get up to the bigs, that's another important aspect of it is knowing your opponent, knowing how to attack them.”
Baseball’s always been a sport slow to embrace change. So innovative teams that jumped into technology first had an edge.
That’s disappeared as all 30 major league teams, and most of their minor-league affiliates, have joined the tech boom.
“It's gotten to the point where there's no dumb teams anymore,” said sportswriter Will Carroll, author of the book “The Science of Baseball: The Math, Technology, and Data Behind the Great American Pastime.”
“Everybody has a team of analysts. Everybody has roughly the same technology. There's not the same advantages that there were even 10 years ago,” he said. “Now, it's how do you integrate that information into your operation?”
Carroll said the reason teams rushed to embrace technology is simple.
“It's all about winning,” he said. “It's just a matter of how much do you want to win? And where can you find that little advantage?”
Finding that advantage used to be the domain of scouts and coaches. They relied on decades of baseball experience — acquired by watching thousands of games — to evaluate and then mold players.
Some of them initially pushed back against the reliance on technology over traditional baseball scouting, but it’s clear now that’s where the game is headed.
For the Wind Surge, Carder said merging baseball’s past with its future is necessary for players to excel.
“You still got your old school guys, but being able to find that blend of old school and new school, I think, is how teams are able to find the most success right now,” he said.
“It pays dividends if you use it in the right way, that's for sure.”
