Who is your favorite baseball pitcher? Shane McClanahan? Sandy Alcantara? Justin Verlander? Whoever said that, two of the top sports tech companies in the US – Rapsodo and Trajekt Sports – have teamed up to make a robotic version of it, and the results are reportedly incredibly accurate.
Okay, so we’re not talking about autonomous walking-talking-throwing robots, as great as that sci-fi-tinged MLB commercial. However, Rapsodo and Trajekt have combined their considerable powers to throw a host of different technologies at the problem of building a machine capable of accurately simulating the pitching style of any player you want to practice batting against — and they may have just succeeded, too.
Their solution combines Trajekt Arc, a pitching robot that uses super-precise motor control, image processing and machine learning to throw perfect consistent pitches, and Rapsodo PRO 3.0, a ground-based radar and image-based tracking system designed to accurately measure hitting and pitching data .
Heck, the lineup even has a video projection system that lets you see life-size footage of the players throwing right at you. (This offers footage of stock pitchers as standard, though teams can also upload their own video data for added customization.) Consider it the future of batting practice as we know it.
“We’re trying to be the leader in making baseball pitching machines that replicate and can control all the degrees of freedom needed to replicate a human pitcher,” Joshua Pope, Ferry’s CEO and co-founder, told Digital Trends.
“It’s really designed and geared toward improving the player’s ability to play the field,” added Seth Daniels, Product Director at Rapsodo.
A brief history of pitching machines
The first baseball pitching machine was invented back in 1897 by Princeton professor Charles Howard “Bull” Hinton. Hailed somewhat ominously as the “baseball gun” and firing baseballs with the help of gunpowder, it was, on the other hand, allegedly inaccurate and dangerous. Fortunately, technology has evolved from there.
During the 20th century, various throwing machines were invented, one notable creation being Paul Givagnoli’s 1952 throwing machine. This machine launched the ball toward the plate in a pitching style that was meant to mimic a real pitcher. the action of throwing hands. For the first time, a player in the batting cage could take endless practice against a machine capable of recreating what it was like to go up against a human pitcher.
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For most of us, the evolution of pitching machines could probably stop there. Add in some incremental adjustments and modifications, and a machine that can throw somewhat human-like is enough to work with to improve our batting average. If you really need to visualize hitting against a superstar pitcher, do what most of us do when faced with a backyard basketball hoop: use a little imagination.
But things are different when you get to the pros. At that level, the differences that separate the MLB home run leader from the also run leader are almost imperceptible. For these elite athletes looking for even the slightest edge over their opponents, the idea of being able to train against a pitcher’s exact arsenal and pitching characteristics before they step onto the field could be of great importance. This is where the combination of Trajekt Arca and Rapsodo PRO 3.0 comes into play.
Training your pitcher
“The way it works is that any tracking technology used to measure a player’s floor can be used as a data source that feeds into the Ferry,” Joshua Pope said.
In many training cases, this involves getting your pitcher to throw pitch patterns that are then used to teach the device, thanks to ball tracking technology. Throwing out a few pitch patterns is enough to teach the Ferry Arc the necessary pitch metrics, such as speed, spin, movement and strike zone location. Once that data is captured, that step will be added to the device’s system to be available for future workouts. Think of it as Netflix offers.
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However, what if you want to model the game of a particular opposing player—say, Tony Gonsolin of the Los Angeles Dodgers—after who you’re going up against in an upcoming game? A call to Gonsolin (“Hey, Tony. We’re playing you next week, and we were just wondering…”) is probably out of the question, but you’re out of luck. It’s also possible to train the Ferry Arc using pitch tracking data from sources like Hawk-Eye, which tracks pitches for MLB games, still allowing you to create a believable replica of how an opposing pitcher performs on the field.
“There’s something called a nine-parameter fit, which completely defines the trajectory of the ball, the parameters of the break, the spin rate,” Pope said. “What Trajekt does is we control release conditions with high precision. As long as you have measured those release positions using any tracking system, you can use that as a transfer. This data is ubiquitously available at all levels of baseball.”
A secret weapon
Spoiler alert: sports are competitive. That competition doesn’t just take place on the playing field, playground, track or field. Teams compete for the most promising players, and yes, the best new technologies to help support them.
For this reason, neither Daniels nor Pope were able to disclose which MLB teams currently use their pitching technology, although they noted that it is currently in use on the practice fields of seven such teams. (Previous Rapsodo technology is used by all 30 MLB teams.)
“No, we are not able to find out [that information]”, said the Pope. “I think a lot of people see it as a competitive advantage that they want to keep close. We respect that too [therefore] keeping it a secret.”
However, if it proves to live up to its promise, you can bet your bottom dollar that this kind of technology will start to filter down to other teams — and maybe beyond MLB.
“Our flagship product … is the most accurate replica of the pitcher we’ve ever encountered with any pitching machine,” Pope said. “It’s always going to be like our premium offering, and I think the most valuable use case is going to be with those MLB teams that can upload video data, that can upload all the game data that they have from games for premium practices. But we are working on lighter versions that are more portable, that keep some of the key features like the video projection of the pitcher’s cheer [and] ball orientation controller.”
Coming soon to a batting cage near you? Hey, there are worse ways to improve your game than going up against MLB All-Stars, virtual or not.
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Source: newstars.edu.vn