By Alex Woodward
As the Orioles continue their full blown rebuild you can already see some of the changes they have made to the organization that will have a large impact on how they conduct business moving forward.
When Mike Elias and Sig Mejdal took over in Baltimore, fans heard a lot of chatter about the Orioles expanding their analytics department and how they will utilize those analytics to help them with their decision making. Remember, the Orioles were way behind in the analytics department compared to the rest of Major League Baseball. When Elias and Mejdal took over, the Orioles had just one analyst working in the analytics department.
Right now they have four people not named Mejdal listed as employees in their analytics department and that number will continue to grow as time goes on. Even with a less than optimal amount of staff in the department, the Orioles have already made noticeable changes to their technology across the organization.
It started in
Spring Training where the Orioles introduced the usage of high-speed cameras called Edgertronic cameras that are set up behind pitchers during bullpen sessions. These cameras help pitchers look back at everything from their delivery mechanics, arm slot, spin rate on pitches and much more. Pitchers in the lower minor league systems have had a ton of success so far this season and many of them have attributed that success to the help of analytics. Michael Baumann, DL Hall and Grayson Rodriguez all joined the Scott & Jeremy Show last week and they all mentioned how useful analytics have been for their development. Some simplified it as an easier way to identify what pitch is most effective and others mentioned that it helps them know what pitch to use in what count.
High speed cameras are just the tip of the iceberg and I'm sure the Orioles plan on implementing more technology to help with analytics moving forward. They may have been behind the curve heading into this season but Sig Mejdal is already heading the charge of a new trend in MLB. It's called BlastMotion and like the Edgertronic cameras for a pitcher, Blast Motion is just as useful for a hitter.
From the Aberdeen Ironbirds, an #Orioles affiliate... --Ever look back and think you'd be smart enough to identify historical changes as they're happening? Well, here's your chance. #KeepTiltingAtWindmills #WatchingHistory pic.twitter.com/h453uB9y4B
— Kyle Boddy (@drivelinebases)
July 21, 2019 Pictured above is Orioles 2019 7th round pick Johnny Rizer who went 5-for-5 and hit for the cycle on Saturday for the Ironbirds. That thing that looks like the tip of a condom at the bottom of his bat is the receptor for the Blast Motion system. That receptor automatically calculates things like launch angle, exit velocity, attack angle, estimated ball flight and much more. This is the description straight from the Blast Motion website: "Blast Baseball combines sensor-based swing metrics with auto-edited video clips in an easy to use mobile app. Get real-time feedback with a solution designed to help you train smarter and get better."
So why is this a big deal? The man who sent the above tweet, Kyle Boddy, is considered a pitching, data science and engineering expert for
Driveline Baseball. He mentions in the tweet thread that there are only 3 other teams he knows of that are using Blast Motion technology during games in the minor leagues. The 3 teams? The Astros (surprise, surprise), the Phillies and the Orioles. The Detroit Tigers have also been using this type of technology as one of Boddy's followers pointed out on the thread:
The @tigers use @DiamondKinetics in-game. This is a photo from @wmwhitecaps, the Tiger’s Midwest League affiliate. pic.twitter.com/rRZl0icNHn
— Great Lakes Bat Co. (@GLBatCo)
July 21, 2019 It's astounding that just 4 teams are using this type of technology right now. Granted, there could be other teams using this tech and we just don't know about it yet but we do know for a fact that the Orioles are buying in and diving head first into this trend. I'm not surprised at all the Tigers are one of the teams using this tech since that technology is the type of data they used to realize JD Martinez was on the verge of becoming one of the best power hitters in the game.
In Ben Reiter's Astroball - The New Way To Win It All, Reiter highlights a series of events in 2014 that led to the Astros missing out on a potential breakout year for Martinez. He struggled in his first 3 major league seasons with the Astros as he struck out once every 4 at bats and he hit just 24 HR's in 252 games. Coming into Spring Training in 2014 with the Astros, he asked manager Bo Porter for more opportunities in Spring Training to show the changes he made to his swing in the offseason (focused on changing the launch angle of his swing). Martinez didn't get as many opportunities as he would have liked and Houston ended up releasing him before the start of the season.
Then he signed with the Tigers and broke out as a premier power hitter, mashing 99 HR's in three and a half seasons in Detroit before they traded him to the Diamondbacks. Houston kicked themselves for not listening to Martinez about his swing and letting him go for nothing. In Astroball, Mike Elias & Sig Mejdal admitted that if they used technology such as Blast Motion back then they would have been able to see the changes to JD's swing through the data. Ever since that mistake, they have been using Blast Motion type of technology ever since.
To sum it all up, the Orioles major league product stinks...as expected. The good news though is the fact that they are utilizing analytics at all levels of the organization and they are consistent with how they plan on using it. Whether it's helping a pitcher realize his best pitch and when to use it or helping a batter adjust the path of his bat in his swing or just using the data to compare a players development throughout a season. Analytics are a key piece to success in today's MLB and the Orioles are in overdrive trying to catch up to the rest of the league and hopefully, one day, they will be ahead of the curve. Trust the data and trust the process.
