The first baseball pitching machine dates back more than 100 years. Obviously, things have come a long way since that gunpowder-fueled machine debuted at Princeton, but that’s more or less the case with most modern systems. A ball is thrown, either manually or mechanically, into one or more spinning wheels that propel it toward the batter at high speed.
But there is a lot of potential room for innovation here. Advances in artificial intelligence, statistical tracking, advanced metrics, and robotics can come together nicely for a proper, more 21st-century twist on the classics. Trajekt Arc is one such pitching robot, designed to learn and recreate the pitching of real-world pitchers.
A few weeks ago, The Athletic ran an article about how the Cubs used the system in practice to mimic Madison Bumgarner. The system adjusts to the World Series hero’s left arm release point and provides an image of the Bearded Diamonds pitcher on its display. It’s not exactly the same as facing him on the pitch, but by all accounts it works when an emergency replacement is needed.
According to parent company Trajekt Sports, seven of MLB’s 30 teams are currently using the bot. Meanwhile, St. Louis-based sports data company Rapsodo claims that all 30 teams use its service. Earlier this week, the two companies announced a collaboration that brings a wider range of pitching variables to the system.
Users simply add pitcher characteristics to the Trajekt Arc and the machine replicates its habits. Before practice, Trajekt Arc throws a series of test balls, which Rapsodo’s PRO 3.0 measures and provides real-time feedback to Trajekt Arc, comparing the metrics they want to the ones they measure. Some of these metrics include speed, spin, movement, and strike zone location. Once the data is captured, pitching features are added to the equipment system for use by teams when training their players.
Analytics has become a core part of the game over the past few decades, and it makes sense to find a way to integrate it into the data-obsessed technological world, which is certainly better than a baseball-filled one in any case. Cannons are better.
