Around the Island

Big data comes to baseball — and the library tonight

PHOTO: FREEIMAGES.COM
PHOTO: FREEIMAGES.COM

BY PETER FARRAR | CONTRIBUTOR
Have you ever wondered how fast the ball comes off of Giancarlo Stanton’s bat? How much ground Andrew McCutchen actually covers in center field? Or just how fast Billy Hamilton really is?

Come to the Shelter Island Library on tonight, Friday, at 7 p.m. when Friday Night Dialogues will feature Dirk Van Dall, vice president of multimedia technology development at Major League Baseball Advanced Media. He’ll tell us about how our nation’s favorite pastime, baseball, may never be the same.

His most recent project is the StatCast Player Tracking Initiative for major league baseball. StatCast records the metrics of every player in every game, illuminating nuances of the athletes. Mr. Van Dall is a new media pioneer at the “confluence of streaming video, traditional storytelling, big data and interactivity.”

StatCast was deemed by MLB network analyst Brian Kenny to be “a revolutionary technology that will change the way fans around the world view our national pastime.”

It collects data using a series of high-resolution optical cameras along with radar equipment that has been installed in all 30 major league ballparks. The technology precisely tracks the location and movements of the ball and every player on the field at any given time.

“Our hope is that this, for baseball, will be one of the largest advances in instant replay that we’ve seen in the last 50 years,” said Bob Bowman, major league baseball’s president of business and media.

It will add an element to the way fans evaluate players too. Instead of just looking at the leaders in Triple Crown categories or even advanced sabermetrics, fans will now be able to seek out players with the fastest average speeds on the basepaths, the most efficient outfielders over the course of a season or the strongest throws from each position.

Come and find out who can run 22 mph around the bases, the hit angle of a homer or just what makes that particular play so special — instant statistical analysis that will make you love baseball even more.

Admission is free with donations gladly accepted.

Coming up: On July 24, Dr. George Dempsey, panel member of the Tick-Borne Disease Resource Center at Southampton Hospital, will speak about tick-borne diseases and what you need to know.

On July 31, Eileen Duffy will present “Behind the Bottle: The Rise of Wine on Long Island.”