This quotation from a scout emphasizes that idea: “You hate to say it, but velocity is kind of the first thing that jumps out at you. It’s no secret that one of the primary things big-league scouts look for is velocity. Two large groups of players who need velocity data are pitchers at the college and high school level who aspire to pitch in the big leagues. Increasing demand for radar guns is coming from other participants in the world of baseball who have the same need for velocity data that major league players do. But this very useful information is routinely recorded only at big-league ballparks. Some of the tracking data are made available to fans via websites such as Baseball Savant and Brooks Baseball. The speed, flight, and location of every pitch thrown in a major-league stadium is tracked. Baseball commentators regularly discuss the speed of a pitcher’s fastball and the difference in miles per hour between his fastball and changeup, and the pitch speed appears on most big-league scoreboards. In today’s data-driven baseball environment, one of the most important data is the speed of a pitch. This article will discuss three aspects of the current radar gun phenomenon: what is driving the demand for radar guns, factors affecting the accuracy of a radar gun reading, and a comparison of velocity results from widely used guns. Just like cell phones, radar guns are becoming more, not less, common in the world of baseball. Does this mean that radar guns are outdated and no longer useful? The somewhat surprising answer is no. Today, advanced systems, such as TrackMan and Hawk-Eye, provide more, and better, data about what happens on the field than the radar gun did, and one no longer sees the familiar gun at major league games. But as technology has advanced, the once cutting-edge radar gun has been replaced by new and better equipment. For baseball fans who are no longer young, it is easy to conjure up the once-common image of a man behind home plate with a radar gun pointed at the pitcher.
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