Pitchers and Catchers And Technology…The New Rite Of Spring

This is one of the weeks that baseball fans cherish, the week pitchers and catchers report, and hope springs anew for each of the 30 Major League Baseball clubs. Everyone feels like they have a chance to catch the defending champion Cardinals, all starting with a clean slate in the warm weather of Florida and Arizona.

As spring unfolds teams will again reassess and try to use whatever means available to get an advantage over their competition for the long haul of the 162 game season. One of those areas that is becoming more and more en vogue is technology, and the ability to more clearly assess and evaluate talent almost in real time, and one of those companies that MLB teams and players are turning more to is Bloomberg Sports .

In just three years, the Bloomberg Sports business, modeled after its parent company’s use of analytics to revolutionize the financial services business, has become one of the greatest suppliers and innovators in analytics for teams, players, broadcasters and fans themselves. This past offseason, the company took an even bigger step forward, forming a partnership with Theo Epstein and the Chicago Cubs to revamp their entire player development system, using the Bloomberg technology.

“Our partnership with the Cubs is another step in our evolution as the best source for analytic solutions, and we are looking forward to working very closely with Theo and his staff to advance what we have been doing,” Bill Squadron, head of Bloomberg Sports, said recently. “However what we are most proud of is our ability to create specific applications for any audience…players, fans, broadcasters, teams…that will help the development and enjoyment of the game.”

While the release of “Moneyball” this past fall may have awakened the casual fan to the value of analytics, those in the baseball business have been ramping up the use of technology for several years. The days of digging into stats have been replaced by streaming video downloaded on tablets, live feeds of high school and college baseball and thousands of hours of scouting on handheld devices from all over the world. The only hindrance in that evolution to the Majors lies with MLB itself, which still does not permit any form of technology in and around the dugouts.

The bullpen phone is safe for now.

For the fan, the advance of technology will again mean more enhanced broadcasts and online experiences, and implementation of more fantasy data brought to mobile technology. While only a handful of fantasy platforms are available on mobile now, the world is changing quickly. “The advances in mobile will be a game-changer for any fantasy player, and we have really looked to implement that technology into all our offerings, as have many others,” Squadron added. “The ability to update and change rosters and react almost in real time to the goings-on during a game, will make fantasy more engaging for all, and that is how the marketplace will grow.”

So while baseball’s cherished traditions do start to take hold these week, the advance of technology does signal a changing of the experience for the better. Whether that means more competitive races obviously remains to be seen, but it will mean more ways for us to experience those traditions than ever before. The great game gets greater.