STATCAST

there's no statcast in the minors -- although there are mysterious proprietary systems at certain home fields, the extent of which is unknown.

recognizing a fly ball and adjusting one's route accordingly *seems* like a god-given talent to me, but certainly the stats can't hurt

timely! NYT Mag article on Statcast, mostly as it relates to defense (and Kiermaier, J Bradley Jr)

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/02/magazine/can-new-technology-bring-baseballs-data-revolution-to-fielding.html?_r=0

http://sports.yahoo.com/news/statcast-wants-to-change-how-were-consuming-baseball-games-160500812.html

more changes afoot

see also http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/statcast-and-the-future-of-war

watch out for those velocity numbers

http://www.fangraphs.com/blogs/about-all-these-velocity-spikes/

https://deadspin.com/major-league-baseballs-statcast-can-break-sabermetrics-1820987737

if baseball ever plays again, statcast is moving from a radar-based tracking system (good for velocity) to an optical ('hawkeye') system, which purportedly is better for most everything else

intersting developments:

- will track bodies on the level of limbs rather than center of gravity

- beyond exit velocity & launch angle, bat path/speed will be trackable (who swings the hardest? who transfers energy to the ball most efficiently?)

- beyond pitch speed & spin rate, the axis of a pitch's spin and the arrangement of the seams moving around that axis can be tracked, which should reveal a lot more about why some pitchers get more movement

a further disheartening development in taylorism, of course, but also neato

expected batting average on luis robert's 487-foot homer yesterday was .990; i'd be very interested in hearing more about the 1% where that's an out

i don't know, but i really like that version of a boxscore and i'm going to start using it more often

fire emojis a worthy addition to the format

it's awesome! you can just glance at a player with 3 fire emojis and no hits and have an understanding of their luck in that game, and same deal on the pitching side

(for those who didn't click the link, fire emojis are used to designate "hard-hit" balls during a plate of appearance