Miller: Baseball’s numbers revolution is spreading to Latin America
From Sam Miller at ESPN.com on June 21, 2017, with mention of SABR members Anthony Rescan, Hector Acevedo, and Leonte Landino:
As ingrained as advanced analytics now are in major league baseball, the rest of the sport — the foreign leagues, independent leagues and amateur levels — is still largely data-dark. Football has the high school team that never punts, and basketball has the school that shoots only 3s. Get away from the major leagues and its affiliates, though, and baseball is mostly gimmick free.
The biggest obstacle to using data is not having data. In the majors and in much of the minors, every pitch is not only recorded but makes up dozens of discrete data points to tinker with. But everywhere else the samples are small, the scorekeepers are unreliable, the technology is minimal and the team budgets are laughable.
“You can get an idea from data available stateside if the player is in affiliated ball, but you’re almost never choosing between two affiliated players,” says Anthony Rescan, who does statistical analysis for the Sydney Blue Sox of the independent Australian Baseball League. “It’s usually two guys who work day jobs around Sydney.”
Read the full article here: http://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/19689418/baseball-numbers-revolution-spreading-latin-america
Originally published: June 23, 2017. Last Updated: June 23, 2017.