Tag Archives: Baseball

Minor League Baseball in Texas

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The joys of Minor League Baseball are many.  Inexpensive tickets, cheap hot dogs and all kinds of weird promotions and between inning antics. However, two of the greatest joys are knowing that you are not contributing much to the deep pockets of a franchise owner slurping at the public trough (see previous post re: Mark Cuban); and knowing that the players are not knocking down millions but are playing for the true love of the game – and the opportunity to perhaps knock down millions.  So if you don’t live in Houston or the MetroPlex, go out and support your local team.

Here are the Texas Minor League teams affiliated with Major League clubs:

Corpus Christi Hooks
El Paso Chihuahuas
Frisco RoughRiders
Midland RockHounds
Round Rock Express
San Antonio Missions

Then there are the independent Sugar Land Skeeters – whose players really are playing for love of the game.  Unfortunately, the other independent team, the Fort Worth Cats, were booted from LaGrave Field and do not appear to be playing in 2015.

You really have to admire a team that has a tiny hairless Mexican dog as its mascot – even if it is one bad ass looking tiny hairless Mexican dog.

MLB Debuts Statcast Era of Baseball

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Red wonders how much information is too much.  Major League Baseball will have additional opportunities to evaluate that age old question when it debuts Statcast tonight on MLB Network’s broadcast of the Cardinals/Nationals game.  Statcast has actually been around for a while and was used during the All-Star game and in the playoffs last season.  But tonight’s game will be the first regular season game where every play will be tracked in some form or fashion.

What is Statcast?

Statcast, a state-of-the-art tracking technology, is capable of gathering and displaying previously immeasurable aspects of the game. Statcast collects the data using a series of high-resolution optical cameras along with radar equipment that has been installed in all 30 Major League ballparks. The technology precisely tracks the location and movements of the ball and every player on the field at any given time.

In other words, every movement of every player and the bat and the ball can be tracked and analyzed.  So if you desperately want to know how many times Johnny Cueto scratches his crotch in a seven inning appearance – Statcast is for you.    With high resolution digital cameras, laser positioning equipment and highly accurate GPS, this development has been inevitable and will likely migrate to other sports in the near future.  For example, at the 2014 World Cup, they could tell us exactly how far every player had run during a match.