Statcast at 10: From MLB’s secret project to inescapable part of modern baseball

Let's break down the 2024 Home Run Derby. The 8 participating players hit 225 HRs. The hardest hit ball had an exit velocity of 111 MPH; the longest sailed for 473 ft. The balls traveled for a total distance of 17.5 miles.

We know these numbers thanks to Statcast, the high-speed, high-accuracy, automated tool developed to analyze player movements and athletic abilities.

The development of Statcast transformed baseball into arguably the most number-driven sport in the world. Baseball fans now argue about players using terms like spin rate, barrels, and launch angles. And that transformation into the modern game started at the desk of Claudio Silva, Institute Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and Co-Director of the Visualization Imaging and Data Analysis Center (VIDA) Center.

Alongside colleagues at VIDA, Silva and his team created a data engine at Major League Baseball (MLB)’s behest that would serve as the computational foundation of the technology that would change the sport forever.

"Working on Statcast turned out to be a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for an academic,” says Silva. “For five years (2012-2017), Carlos Dietrich and I worked closely with MLB, ChyronHego, and Trackman engineers on the technology that was eventually marketed under MLB Statcast. The collaboration not only shaped my research in sports analytics, but also led to lifelong friendships."

Read more about the development of Statcast as it turns 10 years old in The Athletic.