#782 micro measures

Is there one statistic that baseball does not capture?  I doubt it.  The sport that is stat-crazed has taken it even further as Major League Baseball has gone even more high tech.  Now cameras will be placed throughout the field, allowing fans to track every nuance about catches, hits and plays throughout the field.  It's no longer just pitches that will be micro-analyzed; now you'll now that a player hit the ball at X speed, it went X feet and traveled at a specified angle. 

This, of course, will lead to geometry-in-action as fans calculate where a ball will land, how fast the player ran, the speed of the throw to first and whether or not the umpire got the call right.  It is a math geek's dream game, and MLB hopes that it will allow average fans to become "more invested in their favorite player's performance."  

Think of all the new categories for the Hall of Fame.  It's no longer about hits leader or RBI leader, but fastest steal, quickest release from the glove, jump speed off the base, percent efficiency in which the fielder reached the ball, time of the first step of the fielder after the ball was hit.  Literally, they are tracking all of this.

On one hand, the new metrics will allow teams, players and fans to add a whole new dimension to the game.  On the other hand, it becomes so granular that the big picture is lost.  It doesn't really matter about how fast the throw travels to the base; what matters is whether or not the runner is safe.

In your organization, don't get so lost in measuring the small stuff that you fail to place enough weight on the numbers that really matter.  All stats are not created equal.

-- beth triplett
leadershipdots.blogspot.com

@leadershipdots
leadershipdots@gmail.com

Sources:
'Tech' me out to the ballgame by Frank Seravalli for the Philadelphia Daily News in the Telegraph Herald, March 9, 2014, p. 9B

Baseball brings new tech to the plate by Daniel Roberts in Fortune, April 28, 2014, p. 18