By Gwen Peace
Cleveland Guardians scout John Manuel remembers a time when analytics had little meaning in the world of baseball.
In fact, when technology started to develop there was often pushback against its use, in favor of more traditional methods.
“Scouts in 1981 were like, ‘I don’t need a radar gun. I can just eyeball it,’” Manuel said.
But slowly, the usefulness of the technology began to outweigh the old-timers’ pushback.
Scouts across the country started to recognize that using tools like radar guns and tracking analytics like pitching speed were useful in identifying future talent for their teams.
Sentiments were shifting.
“Why wouldn’t you use a radar gun?” Manuel said. “Why wouldn’t you want more precise information? So, every time there’s been a new tool to evaluate players, there’s been resistance to change in baseball. Now, there is so much data.”
It didn’t come all at once. It was a gradual buildup year after year. And then in 2015, it exploded.
Major League Baseball released StatCast, a centralized database full of information and statistics about every team and every player, all accessible to the public.
Players began chasing higher and higher numbers, spurred on by the tangible tracking of improvement made visible through the data. Scouts began relying more and more on what they saw on screens versus what they saw with their eyes.
Slowly, these new methods trickled down from the majors to the minors and into the college game, where the use of technology has surged in recent years. The shift reshaped player development, unlocking unprecedented performance gains, but also quietly introducing new risks.
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In Chapel Hill, UNC baseball is embracing that change.
Ahead of the 2026 season, the team became the first college program to install a Trajekt Pitching Machine — a robotic device that can mimic any pitcher’s throwing style for hitters to practice on through taking advantage of advanced analytics.
It wasn’t a hard decision for the team to invest in the machine, despite its steep price tag of $15,000 to $20,000 per month.
“Anytime something comes out, we look at it technology-wise as, ‘Can it make our players better?’” Scott Forbes, UNC baseball head coach, said. “And it was a no-brainer.”
It’s a tool that has already been widely adopted by most Major League teams because of the unprecedented amount of preparation it allows players to undergo before facing opponents.
And, according to UNC assistant coach and recruiting coordinator Scott Jackson, it gives the team a huge leg up.
“We get the exact shape of the ball, so our hitters will have a look at a pitcher’s pitch speeds before they even get in the batter’s box,” Jackson said. “We think it’s the equivalent of maybe facing the starter for the third time.”
The sentiment is shared by junior infielder Gavin Gallaher, who said the machine is helping develop the whole team, rather than just the starting lineup.
“It’s a great tool that I think we utilize really well,” Gallaher said. “I think that it’s something that’s going to benefit us extremely, especially early in the season and then later in the season it’ll be huge for guys that aren’t getting at bats every single day, for them to be able to get back there and still be able to face kind of that live pitching, even though it’s not on the field.”
The benefits are already showing, Forbes said. UNC is currently ranked second in the nation and has a record of 33-7.
The tool is helping players improve their techniques by giving them the chance to practice the same type of pitch over and over again without human error getting in the way.
Junior infielder Jake Schaffner noted that the machine took a little bit of getting used to, but once he got the hang of it he was able to work on fixing recurring problems with his swing that had been costing him hits.
“It’s been great just trying to focus on some things that I struggle with and really applying it,” he said, “because I can now use it in the game because it’s like facing a real pitcher.”
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It’s not just the hitters who are taking advantage of new technology to improve their game — the pitchers are getting in on the movement as well.
Pitching labs dedicated to helping pitchers understand their body better, throw faster and avoid injury, have sprung up around the country.
One of the first to open was at Wake Forest University in 2019, after an orthopedic surgeon at Wake Forest Baptist Health came up with the idea of using data and technology to prevent and lessen the increasingly common elbow injuries affecting pitchers on the team.
The lab uses a combination of technology — including more than 20 cameras, force plates and a 3D Doppler radar system — to evaluate each pitcher’s throwing style.
The biomechanical data that is gathered then goes to a team of doctors and researchers, headed by the lab’s director Dr. Kristen Nicholson, who review the data and identify things that might be problematic, like the angle of their arm or the speed that they are throwing.
“We just give them [pitchers] some general feedback on those parameters or things that we think they could do to lessen their injury risk or increase their performance in terms of ball velocity,” Nicholson said. “And then we have a player development coordinator that walks them through that, gives them recommendations on exercises and drills that they can do to implement that feedback.”
So far, the lab has been a success, according to Nicholson. Across the United States, ulnar collateral ligament (UCL) injuries have surged among pitchers, in part due to the analytics boom and subsequent push from players to chase higher and higher throwing speeds.
But, due to the efforts of the pitching lab staff, Nicholson said Wake Forest has not seen that trend replicated within its own pitching staff.
“We say here that we are focused on finding pitching efficiencies, so how do you maximize performance while minimizing injury risk,” Nicholson said. “And so, we really focus on both of them, and I think that has helped our team a lot. We’ve had probably less injuries than most Division I college programs and that helps the players’ longevity as well.”
Beyond extending players’ careers and helping the team’s performance through the evaluations, the lab has another upside: recruiting.
Top-level pitching prospects have been flocking to the school, largely thanks to the tangible results emerging from the lab. In a world where pitchers’ careers are getting shorter and shorter, the prospect of career longevity holds a lot of weight.
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Baseball is not the only sport being reshaped by analytics. Across UNC athletics, similar data and technology-driven approaches are becoming central to how teams train and compete.
Olympic sports like women’s soccer use wearable technology like Catapult vests to track biometrics from heart rate to speed to movement intensity, allowing team staff to gain valuable insights about the performance of each player.
“I have live data during practice,” said Elena Kantu, director of sport science and performance coach for UNC women’s soccer. “I can say, like, who was the fastest on this shot, who was the most — who was the most explosive, who is working the hardest?”
In addition to biometric tracking, Kantu employs a team of undergraduate students, who attend practice every day and track statistics like pass completion, pass accuracy, assists and goals. That information feeds directly into evaluations that help determine playing time and starting lineups.
The system builds on a long-standing philosophy within the program — the “competitive cauldron,” developed by former head coach Anson Dorrance, which emphasizes constant competition and measurable performance. Now, with the increased data available, the cauldron is less of an art and more of a science.
“This is one of the ways that it has evolved,” Kantu said. “Now we have more technology, so we are able to track more things and that just goes into the cauldron.”
The increased data also has another benefit: preventing injury. By monitoring workload and intensity, Kantu said that staff can identify when a player might be pushing too hard, allowing the staff, and players themselves, to make adjustments before problems arise.
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Not everything that has resulted from the boom has been positive, however.
While analytics can be used to prevent injury, they also are a driving factor in the steady rise of sports injuries over recent decades. Numbers give athletes something to chase. And oftentimes, the chase does not end well.
This is something that former Atlanta Braves orthopedist Dr. Joseph Chandler saw grow over his more than 30-year career.
“They’re chasing spin rates,” Chandler said. “They’re chasing vertical movement; they’re chasing horizontal movement across the plate. They’re chasing those factors. Well, there’s a downside to that. Huge downside injury.”
Most of the time, this injury comes in the form of a torn UCL, which has to be repaired surgically. This process — known as ‘Tommy John surgery’ after the first player to successfully undergo the operation — involves replacing the torn elbow ligament with a tendon graft. While successful most of the time, the process is becoming troublingly common among younger and younger athletes every year and often has to be repeated more than once over a pitcher’s career.
This then results in a shorter pitching career — in 2000, MLB rookies had an average career of almost seven years. By 2020, that number had shrunk drastically to just over three years, according to research conducted by New York Yankees head physician Christopher Ahmad.
“I’m not saying analytics are bad, but I’m saying if pitchers start chasing that very early, they’re at a much greater risk of injury,” Chandler said. “And that’s — that’s sad. It has changed the game of what people look for, but unfortunately, from a medical standpoint, it’s changed the game too, because the injury rate of shoulder and elbow, particularly elbow injuries, is just sky high now, because the No. 1 factor for that is velocity, so it comes with a price.”
And now, the other thing that comes with a price is the players themselves.
“Seeing players as financial assets really started with statistics,” Manuel said.
That shift traces back, in part, to the philosophy popularized by the movie “Moneyball” — small-market teams using data not only to evaluate players, but also to compete with bigger budgets. It began as a way to outsmart the system, but the system has caught up.
Front offices today have more information than ever before, allowing them to project performance, evaluate risk and assign value with remarkable precision, according to Manuel. In many ways that have made the game more efficient. Players have clearer paths to development and more tools to help them reach their goals.
But as the numbers have become more central to the sport, so has their influence. At every level of the sport, players are chasing measurable gains. It has elevated performance and opened new doors, but it has also contributed to physical strain.
There is no going back to the days where scouts relied solely on instinct. Numbers are now embedded in every level of athletics, shaping how players are recruited, valued, and how the game is played.
“Technology has completely changed how we think about it,” Chandler said.
The question now is not whether analytics belong in the game, but how they should be used and how the sport balances the pursuit of performance with the realities of its cost.
How well it finds that balance may very well define the future of the game.
