what is statcast and how does it capture massive amounts of baseball data? 

a few casts on the history of statcast and how it works 

note: ohtani's swing data and visualization is all courtesy of statcast data and the most recent public feature released by the mlb

statcast is a system of 12 hawk-eye cameras placed within each mlb stadium.

there are five cameras (300 fps) dedicated to bat and pitch tracking and the other seven dedicated to tracking players and batted balls. 

this system allows statcast to track ~99% of batted balls and produce that data for epic visualizations of players swings.

crypto pm @ sp-ce | building ui/ux for the masses for companies like wormhole, pyth, and zksync 

the origins of statcast begin with "the flip" where derek jeter flips the ball to jorge posada to tag out jeremy giambi (who should've slid) at home in the 2001 alds

a debate ensued the next day within mlb offices about what if paul o'neill was in rf instead of shane spencer, what if howe used eric byrnes as a pr. this all led one exec to ask why they couldn't measure all of that. 

that question led the advanced media arm of mlb to begin working on statcast–a technology that could identify and track the position and path of all players on the field and compress, code, and organize that data for use by broadcasters, analysts, and coaches.

personally, i think the coolest part about statcast is how mlb made the decision to publish all this data via baseball savant (https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/) 

this allows journalists, fans, and entire sites (like fangraphs) to create content that surfaces data-driven insights about their favorite players and capture attention from non-traditional sports fans.

the origins of statcast begin with "the flip" where derek jeter flips the ball to jorge posada to tag out jeremy giambi (who should've slid) at home in the 2001 alds

a debate ensued the next day within mlb offices about what if paul o'neill was in rf instead of shane spencer, what if howe used eric byrnes as a pr. this all led one exec to ask why they couldn't measure all of that. 

that question led the advanced media arm of mlb to begin working on statcast–a technology that could identify and track the position and path of all players on the field and compress, code, and organize that data for use by broadcasters, analysts, and coaches. 

https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/5627303/2024/07/10/mlb-statcast-10-year-anniversary/

yeah, same 5 are being used to track ohtani here. 

hawkeye cameras are pretty much everywhere for sports now. didn’t realize they were owned by sony. 

kinda neat. also kinda crazy how sony likely has a monopoly on this small but important niche

super interesting. so same 5 that replays thrown pitch trajectories are being used to track this shohei model?

also, i didn’t realize statcast uses same hawkeye cameras as ones used in tennis :o and is owned by sony… super deep rabbit hole