If you’re like me, you can’t get enough about baseball, technology, and the economics of baseball. You probably watch over 100 of your favorite team’s games per year. You know the tendency of every batter and pitcher on the team. And you can tell which player is which from a mile away based on the way they walk.
Thankfully, most people aren’t like me.
But if you are least slightly intrigued by technology and that silly little game they play in front of thousands of people in the summer, then you might be interested in Field F/X.
What is Field F/X?
Field F/X is a system (aha, see? We’re throwing out terms from your CIS classes left and right!) that tracks everything – yes, everything – on the baseball field. It keeps track of the trajectory of a batted ball, the distance it traveled, the speed at which it traveled, and its acceleration. Is that not crazy enough? It also measures how fast a player ran from his initial spot on the field to the spot where the ball would have landed (or landed if the player didn’t get to it in time). Amazed yet?
Okay, a few more things: it measures how fast a player runs from base to base and how efficiently they made their turn around the bag.
So, what does this mean? Well, for one, every single little factor on the baseball field can be measure. That excites me to no end.
From a more Bentley / CIS-related standpoint, think of the endless opportunities created by this system. Data needs to be managed and analyzed. What does all of the raw data mean? There are plenty of job opportunities for Economics majors, Finance majors, CIS majors, Math majors, etc.
And, of course, this will do wonders in advancing my first true love: sabermetrics.