MLB's Statcast: The Next Evolutionary Step In Baseball's Sabermetric Life Cycle

These are among the most intriguing plays for StatCast analysis.

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Keith Allison from Owings Mills, USA under CC BY-SA 2.0 License

While watching the 2015 Major League Baseball season unfold, the new-school Sabermetrics community eagerly unveiled its latest and greatest toy filled with tons of advanced statistical data in StatCast.  Just a few of the new advanced metrics introduced by StatCast are Route Efficiency, Spin Rate of a certain pitch along with Exit Velocity and Launch Angle of a batted baseball.  The coolest thing about the StatCast system in its rookie season in my view was watching the flight path of a ball in flight that would either find its way into the stands for a home run or be stopped at the wall by a leaping grab from an outfielder.

While all the new advanced measurements of the StatCast system are certainly worthy of taking notice in further advancing the New School Sabermetric approach to baseball that isn't going away anytime in the near future, one has to wonder what will become of the good old-fashioned eye test that traditional scouting is associated with?  The most ideal outcome in the coming years would be a blending of Old-School scouting with New-School analytics.

Tim Musick
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