TrackMan, Rapsodo, and HawkEye have permanently, impenitently changed the game. Sometimes it feels like decades have passed since the eye test was the an acceptable applied means of quantifying a player’s ability on the field. The advent and indoctrination of spin rates, spin axis, spin plane and release point have empirically changed the way folks view baseball. It’s a granular game now, overthrown by science, physics, calculus and the unending pursuit of a marginal advantage.
That frivolous clout can be found buried in the numbers -- not necessarily the numbers in the box score, but the underlying numbers from every individual sequence on the field.