New MLB Software Rates Defense: Adam Dunn is So Totally Screwed

The defensive revolution marches on! Franklin Gutierrez, get ready for a huge pay raise, thanks to new-fangled computerators that will tell your boss just how friggin great you are in center field: A new camera and software system in its final testing phases will record the exact speed and location of the ball and every player on the field, allowing the most digitized of sports to be overrun anew by hundreds of innovative statistics that will rate players more accurately, almost certainly affect their compensation and perhaps alter how the game itself is played. Teams have begun scrambling to develop uses for the new data, which will be unveiled Saturday to a group of baseball executives, statisticians and academics, knowing it will probably become the largest single advance in baseball science since the development of the box score. Several major league executives would not publicly acknowledge their enthusiasm for the new system, to better protect their plans for leveraging it. ...