Sportvision Announces Fourth Annual PITCHf/x Summit

Sportvision will host its fourth annual PITCHf/x Summit on Saturday, Aug. 27, in San Francisco, CA.  Each year since 2008, industry experts assemble to discuss the evolution of Sportvision’s technologies, which are designed to capture and deliver advanced pitching, batting, and fielding performance data.

Sportvision’s PITCHf/x tracking system, which tracks every pitch thrown in MLB play at approximately 60 points from the time it leaves the pitcher’s hand until it crosses home plate, calculates key statistics such as speed, break, location, pitch type and trajectory.  This data has enhanced baseball operations inside MLB clubs, while generating a comprehensive set of data that is used to enhance television broadcasts, the MLB At Bat mobile app, and the MLB.com Gameday Internet game-cast.

The PITCHf/x system is currently being utilized at all 30 MLB ballparks and 19 minor league ballparks throughout the U.S.  The system has captured performance data on more than 4 million pitches thrown, and the technology has been utilized by 16 professional leagues in four countries, including in the Korean and Dominican leagues.

To complement the Company’s PITCHf/x pitch tracking system, which has been capturing performance data at MLB ballparks since 2007, Sportvision recently unveiled COMMANDf/x, a performance measurement system that captures the exact location of the catcher’s target at the release of the pitch, along with the exact location of the ball when it reaches the catcher’s glove.  With COMMANDf/x, Sportvision affords professional teams a new data set that enables analysis such as measuring pitcher command and pitcher fatigue, along with statistics that detail how a catcher is calling a game.

A major theme of the 2011 PITCHf/x Summit will be discussion and analysis of Sportvision’s FIELDf/x System, which has been tested for the past two seasons at AT&T Park, and is currently installed at three MLB ballparks.  FIELDf/x, which captures each player’s movement in a baseball game and the location of the ball, quantifies defense by measuring data such as running speed and reaction time, ultimately revealing which center fielder gets the best jump on the ball, what shortstop has the best range, what fielder takes the most optimal path to the ball, what right fielder makes the strongest and most accurate throw, and so on.  The system captures more tahn 1 million data points in a single game, including the trajectory of hit balls and defensive throws.

“The annual PITCHf/x Summit is a terrific event.  These innovative tracking systems could revolutionize baseball analytics, and there’s no better place to discuss how to effectively use the data to understand baseball at a deeper level,” says Tom Tippett, Director of Baseball information Services, Boston Red Sox.

Featured presentations and discussion topics at the 2011 PITCHf/x Summit include:

• Measuring true defensive range with FIELDf/x
• Catchers’ defensive evaluation with PITCHf/x, FIELDf/x and COMMANDf/x
• Studies of batted ball trajectories & inferring batted ball landing location from HITf/x data
• Using PITCHf/x and HITf/x to assess plate discipline
• How objective batted ball tracking can improve defensive metrics
• PITCHf/x and the Korean Baseball Organization

In addition, the Company’s HITf/x system will once again be in place for the 2011 season.  HITf/x tracks and digitally records data from the initial trajectory of a hit baseball, delivering information that provides additional insight on overall hitter performance.  For each hit ball, an algorithm captures the hit ball trajectory, providing a quantitative measurement of hit ball speed and velocity in three dimensions, delivering analytics on what happens after the ball leaves the bat.  Data points such as horizontal and vertical spray angles and speed off the bat can be used to more effectively analyze hit ball tendencies, while also revealing information that can play a role in defensive positioning.  Thus far, HITf/x has captured data on more than 1 million hit balls.