Posted by Matt Sisson on Wednesday, January 14, 2009 at 5:28 pm

With Pitch-f/x pitch tracking technology having been fully rolled into every ball park at the beginning of 2008, one has to wonder what’s next for the technology in 2009. For the few people who have been doing a lot of research using the data that’s been available over the last two years, I wanted to give a little insight as to what we can expect in 2009. Through a number of emails with Cory Schwartz, Director of Statistics for MLBAM, I was able to get some information as to what’s in store for the upcoming season. The first focus for the 2009 season is to improve the data quality of the Pitch-f/x system that is currently in place, as well as extending its use on and offline.

Cory tells me that these improvements are to include an extensive “real time scouting” area in game day which utilizes Pitch-f/x data. The real time scouting would use the pitch data for the pitcher to show which pitch they are likely to throw depending on the count and situation and what zones are considered the pitchers and batters hot and cold zones. Pitch-f/x will also be expanded to provide more data and graphs for participating RSN’s to use in their broadcast as well as more data and graphs for clubs to use on their in-stadium scoreboards.

Cory also explained that we can expect the roll out of Hit-f/x, a system similar to Pitch-f/x that would use the technology already in place to track the initial batted ball data. Trajectory, angel, velocity, etc. measurements would all be recorded but the technology would be limited to just the initial batted ball data. The Hit-f/x system would not be able to track the entire trajectory of batted balls but from the recorded data, researchers would have the ability to correlate the recorded data with results data (hits, outs, errors, etc) and figure out answers to a range of questions including whether a hitter should try to hit more fly balls or if a hitter is having”bad luck” on their line drive rates. There is no firm time line for the roll out of this system yet but I was told that it is definitely on the radar for the ‘09 season. New software is being built and tested so its only a matter of time before we’re able to dive into another seemingly limitless goldmine of baseball data.