Wednesday, April 26, 2006

Baseball and IT

Interesting story on the role technology has in the day to day operations of the Boston Red Sox, including the 2004 World Series run.

Red Sox SAN Makes Travel Squad
"The Red Sox consider video archives a crucial part of their success. Management identifies it as a major reason for Dave Roberts' stolen base in the ninth inning of a victory over the New York Yankees when Boston trailed the playoff series three games to none. The triumph started Boston on an eight-game winning streak that carried through the World Series.

In the sixth inning of that game, Dave Roberts pulled up every at-bat he could find of [Yankees reliever] Mariano Rivera pitching with a runner on first base," Conley says. "He played that on a loop. He was trying to gain an edge. Then he went in as a pinch runner in the ninth inning, stole second base and scored, and we turned things around. Having that video was another tool in the shed."

And I always thought the magic started at BoRyan's housewarming party...

1 comment:

derteufel said...

I read an interesting article in the Southwest Airlines onboard magazine about the new generation of major league general managers like Theo Epstein. A lot of it was over my limited baseball head but the basic premise was we are in the era of statiticians and accounts because of what a numbers game baseball is.