SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — The Giants’ braintrust stood shoulder to shoulder behind the backstop at Scottsdale Stadium, eyes fixed on the pitcher’s mound and batter’s box.
President of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi, general manager Scott Harris, director of pitching Brian Bannister and pitching coach Andrew Bailey were surrounded by technology. The group had computers on desks behind them spitting out real-time spin rates, edgertronics high-speed video cameras in place to capture grips from their pitchers and a rapsodo hitting unit to track a batted ball’s exit velocity, launch angle and spin axis.
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This was the set-up for the first day of live batting practice at Scottsdale Stadium on Monday and Tuesday and it led to a fairly obvious question: What can the Giants coaching staff possibly see so early in camp?