2025 SABR Analytics: Watch highlights from MLB Statcast Updates: Baseball Savant, ABS, and Game Notes
At the SABR Analytics Conference on Saturday, March 15, 2025, in Phoenix, Arizona, a team from MLB Statcast provided an update on system features related to Baseball Savant, automatic balls-and-strikes (ABS), and game notes.
Panelists included: Jason Bernard, Graham Goldbeck, Kevin Hanson, Do-Hyoung Park, and Mike Petriello from Major League Baseball.
- Watch: Click here to watch a video replay of MLB Statcast Updates: Baseball Savant, ABS, and Game Notes (YouTube)
Here are some highlights from the panel:
On the future of bat tracking
- Petriello: “The batter positioning thing was kind of an offshoot of our main winter project which was what’s next for bat tracking. Everyone’s always asking, ‘Hey, when can we get attack angles?’ Well, that is what this is going to be. This is going to come out a little bit after the batter stance stuff.”
On questioning baseball statistics
- Petriello: “You can have all the data you want and you can have all the right questions but then you actually have to sit down and define it and see, ‘Does this actually work in terms of what human beings playing baseball are trying to do?’ When we do miss distance, it’s not going to be about any point of the bat. It’s going to be about the top of the bat because that’s the point, even though technically there is below. That’s just sort of a window into the sort of questions we ask.”
On adding pitcher arm angle
- Bernard: “One of my favorite things we did last year is that you are able to make a GIF animation of al the pitchers and have it rotate so you see them kind of rotate around the person in the image. That really shows you the diversity of views that batters see and really gives you a perspective into how batting is, even more so today than just it’s a round ball and a round bat.”
On tracking batter positioning in 2025
- Park: “This is exciting data for a couple of reasons. I personally like this because it has a direct visual correlation to how we approach and absorb the game of baseball. This is not something you need to (study to) understand like a swing length or xwOBAcon. This is something where just from day one you look at a game of baseball, you notice how a guy sets up in his stance and where he sets up in the batter’s box even before the bat comes off his shoulder.”
On adding pulled air percentage in 2025
- Park: “This is data that’s been accessible to the intrepid Savant user in the past through our search tool but we felt it (was) an important service right now, especially at this point in time where hitting conversations are, to make this both more accessible, sortable through a leaderboard, filterable through more powerful leaderboard filters that you have on hand right now, and just because the distribution of batted balls and pulled airball percentage in particular are terms that are entering more of our hitting conversation.
On umpire strike calls outside ABS zone
- Goldbeck: “When you think in terms of (the strike zone), it’s not an exactly defined box, it’s more like, ‘Hey, is that a hittable pitch?’ Like an 0 and 2 pitch, you’re going to get a lot more weird sliders and you’re going to get sweepers and things like that. It’s a much harder time because they’re willing to give the benefit of the doubt.”
On player batting choices and the type of strike zone
- Goldbeck: “I think it comes down to people are swinging more based on what they think they can do rather than just where the zone is. And where the zone is kind of changes between full (swings) and challenges.”
On who makes and uses MLB game notes
- Hanson: “When you think about game notes there are sort of three levels of customers. There’s the PR staff that are compiling these, they’re compiling them for the broadcast and media members in the press box. And ultimately, a subset of that information gets served to fans.”
On the practical uses of game notes
- Hanson: “Any time you’re watching the game and someone hits a pinch-hit grand slam or a single player has two home runs in a single inning or one player has nine RBIs in a game and the broadcaster goes, ‘Oh, wow the last time that happened was in 2004 against the Rockies against this pitcher.’ The reason for that is they’re referencing their game notes really quickly.”
Transcription assistance from Jack Barron.
For more coverage of the 2025 SABR Analytics Conference, visit SABR.org/analytics.
Originally published: May 1, 2025. Last Updated: March 25, 2025.