This five-part series will examine how swing biomechanics and the proliferation of technological tools are helping hitters. Part 1 explores the history of this field and the origin stories of a few key devices.
Baseball’s capital-letter Home Run Derby was held in Cleveland on Monday night, but the past few seasons—and 2019 especially—have felt like a daily derby, with league-wide home run rates soaring at unprecedented clips. A manufacturing change that reduces the ball’s drag might be the primary culprit, but the sport’s newfound obsession with launch angles and exit velocity can’t be ignored.
For most of the past decade, new technology and advanced data in baseball had favored pitchers, in part because they initiate the action whereas hitters can only react. Strikeouts have risen precipitously. Fastball velocity is getting faster. Breaking balls are breaking more. In recent years, however, the proliferation of new tools and devices—from bat sensors to virtual reality and wearables to radars—have shifted the pendulum back closer to equilibrium.
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