MLB Releases More Tracking Data, Names Product

Back in March, Major League Baseball Advanced Media announced the formation of a new product that looked like the data-capturing system of our dreams. It was more concept than product, however, and 2014 was essentially going to be a year long beta test, with just three stadiums outfitted with the technology. While the system looks amazing, it hadn’t even yet been named.

That changed today, with this tweet from MLB.

The new Statcast player tracking clips will blow you away. @YasielPuig: http://t.co/jQJJQ6wGwl @TheCUTCH22: http://t.co/XJQ2qO2Aet

— MLB (@MLB) June 13, 2014

We welcome our new StatCast overlords.

Here are the two new plays with StatCast data that have been released.

Yasiel Puig’s insane catch.

Andrew McCutchen’s only-slightly-less insane catch.

StatCast has the potential to revolutionize the way we evaluate baseball. There’s still so much we don’t know about the system and how it’s eventually going to affect the public discourse on the game, but it’s impossible to watch these clips and not get excited. It is a certainty that the scaling and rollout of data at this size will be challenging, and we don’t actually know what kind of information will make its way into the public sector.

But we can dream. And clips like this, along with an actual name for the product, make those dreams seem ever closer to reality.