Imagine teleporting into a baseball video game. That, John Mozeliak said, is how he felt watching college hitters on a recent visit to a Division I program. All the data that might appear on the screen of a virtual game was available, in real time, during batting practice.
“These kids are getting instant feedback,” said Mozeliak, the St. Louis Cardinals’ president for baseball operations. “They know how hard they’re hitting it and they know what angle they’re hitting it at. They know right away what happens if they make subtle changes. So, mentally, it’s easier for these kids to just make the change, because they’re used to that type of instant feedback.”
Give elite athletes an incentive to play a certain way — and the tools to show them how — and this is what you get: a convergence of talent and technology that has rapidly turned baseball into a test of power at the plate and on the mound. Hitters seek home runs and pitchers hunt strikeouts, and both statistics reached unprecedented levels last season: 6,105 homers and 40,104 strikeouts.
But as a new season dawns, many baseball people wonder where the game evolves from here. It is not a question of if things will change, they say, only when and how.
The young sluggers Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa have thrived with the Astros.Credit…Eric Christian Smith/Associated Press