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Kaplan regarding baseball. “This [2015] season it is expected that
Major League Baseball is going to provide an immense amount
of defensive data, and teams will need to tackle that. What is the
value of a plus-defensive shortstop? Is it a million dollars? Two
million? How does it affect how you position players? How does
that change your game strategy?”
College baseball is an unknown because some Division I
schools have the technology at their ballparks, “but most smaller
schools do not,” says Kaplan. “They are getting some funding
and looking to grow.” That would allow teams to blend scouts
and analytics when looking at college players for the upcoming
draft.
Eventually, the more fields that have the data cameras
in place will provide much more information that needs to be
dissected and analyzed. If a lot of colleges end up with cameras
to track information, it will further encourage big-league teams
to evaluate amateur players with the technology used to dissect
the professionals.
Dean Oliver, who used to work for the NBA’s Denver
Nuggets and is now ESPN’s director of production analytics,
points out that with SportVU, “the data will be there for every
team to use however it wants—including making mistakes.
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