PITCHf/x is a system created and maintained by

Sportvision Sportvision was a private company that provided various television viewing enhancements to a number of different professional sporting events. They worked with NFL, NBA, NASCAR, NHL, MLB, PGA and college football broadcasts. In 1996, Rick Cav ...

that tracks the speeds and trajectories of pitched baseballs. This system, which made its debut in the 2006 Major League Baseball (MLB) postseason, is installed in every

MLB Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...

stadium. The data from the system is often used by broadcasters to show a visual representation of the pitch and whether or not a pitch entered the

strike zone In baseball, the strike zone is the volume of space through which a pitch must pass in order to be called a strike even if the batter does not swing. The strike zone is defined as the volume of space above home plate and between the batter's k ...

. PITCHf/x is also used to determine the type of pitch thrown, such as a

fastball The fastball is the most common type of pitch thrown by pitchers in baseball and softball. " Power pitchers," such as former American major leaguers Nolan Ryan and Roger Clemens, rely on speed to prevent the ball from being hit, and have thr ...

, curveball or

slider Slider or Sliders may refer to: Arts * K.K. Slider, a fictional character within the ''Animal Crossing'' franchise * '' The Slider'', a 1972 album by T. Rex * ''Sliders'' (TV series), an American science fiction and fantasy television series * ...

. MLB uses the data from PITCHf/x in its Zone Evaluation System which is used to grade and provide feedback to

umpires An umpire is an official in a variety of sports and competition, responsible for enforcing the rules of the sport, including sportsmanship decisions such as ejection. The term derives from the Old French nonper, ''non'', "not" and ''per'', ...

Sabermetric Sabermetrics, or originally SABRmetrics, is the empirical analysis of baseball, especially baseball statistics that measure in-game activity. Sabermetricians collect and summarize the relevant data from this in-game activity to answer specific ques ...

analysts note that umpire accuracy has improved after the technology was introduced to MLB.

Usage

PITCHf/x is a system using three permanently mounted cameras in the stadium to track the speed and location of a pitched baseball from the pitcher's mound to

home plate A baseball field, also called a ball field or baseball diamond, is the field upon which the game of baseball is played. The term can also be used as a metonym for a baseball park. The term sandlot is sometimes used, although this usually refers ...

with an accuracy of better than one mile per hour and one inch. With PITCHf/x, statistics such as the pitcher with the fastest fastball, or the pitcher with the sharpest-breaking curve, etc., can be analyzed. It calculates the movement of pitches caused by the

Magnus force The Magnus effect is an observable phenomenon commonly associated with a spinning object moving through a fluid. The path of the spinning object is deflected in a manner not present when the object is not spinning. The deflection can be expl ...

. The PITCHf/x data is used in MLB's online Gameday webcast to show the path and speed of each pitch, as well as the location with respect to the strike zone as the pitch crossed the front of home plate. Gameday presents two values from PITCHf/x to characterize the deflection of the pitch trajectory. The BRK quantity represents the amount of bend in the trajectory at its greatest distance from a straight line. A curveball will have a larger value of BRK than a fastball. The PFX quantity represents the deflection of the baseball due to the spin and drag forces from the path it would have taken under the influence of gravity alone. For example, a fastball would have a small value for BRK but a large value for the spin displacement PFX because of the rising action of the fastball caused by backspin. Conversely, a curveball or slider will have a significant break measurement, but lower spin displacement. Major League Baseball Advanced Media, which owns the data used in Gameday, releases the data every day in

XML Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language and file format for storing, transmitting, and reconstructing arbitrary data. It defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable ...

format. Several privately owned websites display this information, often with sorting functions and visual displays. According to

University of Illinois The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (U of I, Illinois, University of Illinois, or UIUC) is a public land-grant research university in Illinois in the twin cities of Champaign and Urbana. It is the flagship institution of the Univer ...

professor Alan M. Nathan, the PITCHf/x system allows analysts to "record with unprecedented precision such quantities as the pitch speed and the location at home plate. But even more importantly, we have measures of quantities that we never had before. As a result, we now have new and novel ways to study the art of pitching." PITCHf/x data is generally consistent across ballparks, but there have been instances of apparent discrepancies in the data gathered at certain ballparks. (For example, a pitcher's fastball speed might be 1–2 mph faster at home than on the road.) PITCHf/x uses algorithms to automatically classify every pitch by type, but these algorithms are imprecise. For the 2017 season, PITCHf/x was deprecated and replaced by

TrackMan The TrackMan is a radar system that uses Doppler technology to track and record 3D characteristics of a sports ball in motion. History TrackMan was created in 2003 by golfers Klaus (CEO) and Morten Eldrup-Jørgensen and radar engineer Fredri ...

, a component of Major League Baseball's Statcast platform.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:PITCHf x Baseball mass media

Usage

See also

References