By PYMNTS | November 1, 2025
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If the Dodgers and Blue Jays keep playing like they did in that 18-inning fever dream last Monday in Los Angeles, the World Series might need a server upgrade. Between Shohei Ohtani’s video‑game night and Freddie Freeman’s walk‑off in Game 3, the ballpark screens felt less like a scoreboard and more like a dashboard. We’re talking exit velocity here, launch angle there, and (yes) an instant, animated strike‑zone challenge when someone dared to question the call. It’s October, but it’…
By PYMNTS | November 1, 2025
|
If the Dodgers and Blue Jays keep playing like they did in that 18-inning fever dream last Monday in Los Angeles, the World Series might need a server upgrade. Between Shohei Ohtani’s video‑game night and Freddie Freeman’s walk‑off in Game 3, the ballpark screens felt less like a scoreboard and more like a dashboard. We’re talking exit velocity here, launch angle there, and (yes) an instant, animated strike‑zone challenge when someone dared to question the call. It’s October, but it’s also orchestration.
Baseball is peaking in drama and data. The sport’s embrace of cameras, sensors and cloud AI has turned dugouts into decision rooms and front offices into R&D labs. The MLB Technology Blog reported that Statcast’s optical tracking (now backed by Hawk‑Eye and Google Cloud) quantifies almost everything that moves, while new bat‑tracking metrics and in-game comms have rewired the way managers and GMs plan, practice, and pull levers. And as this Dodgers‑Jays Series reminded us, the line between “feel” and “file” gets thinner every inning.
9 Techy, Weird Ways Technology Has Invaded Baseball
- Home runs now come with receipts. Gone are the “Tale of the Tape” guesstimates. Hawk-Eye’s 12-camera Statcast system tracks the ball’s flight, and paired with LiDAR-scanned 3D maps of every park, spits out a defensible distance before the peanut guy reaches your row, as Sports Video Group wrote. It’s physics, not folklore.
- “Robot umps” (sort of) are here — by challenge. MLB’s Automated Ball‑Strike (ABS) challenge system rolled through Spring Training and the 2025 All-Star Game with quick, 14-second reviews; full-season adoption is slated for 2026, per MLB. Managers and catchers literally tap their cap, the stadium shows an animated call, and everyone moves on — with fewer ejections, more receipts.
- Foul or fair? New York will see you now. Fair/foul rockets down the line are reviewable, and MLB’s Replay Command Center — powered by high-speed, Hawk-Eye‑fed video — overrides the toughest boundary calls from midtown. For a manager, it’s like having a second set of hawk eyes… in another ZIP code.
- Encrypted pitch‑calling killed the wiggle‑finger economy. PitchCom replaced catcher signs with a wearable keypad and bone-conducting receivers. Result: fewer stolen signs, tighter pace of play and even pitchers calling their own game from the mound. In a tight World Series inning, that’s seconds — and secrets — you keep.
- Bat speed is an official stat now (and scouts are obsessed). Statcast’s bat‑tracking rollout means managers can sort hitters by swing speed, swing length and “squared‑up” rates, not just box‑score outputs. It’s a debugging console for the human swing.
- VR and “face the ace” simulators are the new live BP. Teams are using VR for pitch recognition and the Trajekt Arc machine to replicate an opponent’s delivery, spin and release point so hitters can “face” tomorrow’s starter today. Twenty‑plus clubs are in — and the timing improvements are real, the Washington Post reported.
- Markerless motion capture turns pitchers into datasets. Systems like KinaTrax reconstruct a pitcher’s 3D skeleton in‑game — no reflective dots required — so coaches (and GMs) can adjust mechanics pitch‑to‑pitch, as the New York Post wrote. It’s persuasive enough to sway free agents; just ask the Mets’ tech‑forward pitch lab recruits.
- Wearables and bat sensors moved from the lab to the ladder. WHOOP straps earned MLB approval years ago, giving high‑performance staffs continuous recovery and sleep data. Bat sensors from Blast Motion power swing redesigns across orgs and affiliates. For a GM, that’s health risk and development ROI in real time.
- Yes, AI already managed a pro game. In a Pioneer League stunt that felt like a Black Mirror cold open, the Oakland Ballers ran a game largely on AI recommendations — pinch‑hits, pitching changes and all — while the human skipper supervised, per AP News. If you’re a GM, you’re either intrigued… or pricing guardrails.
In 2025, a manager’s gut instinct gets an API. The frontline toolkit now includes optical tracking for what happened, VR and motion capture for what might happen, and AI‑aided decisioning for what to do next. The Dodgers and Blue Jays aren’t just vying for a trophy, they’re stress‑testing an operating system that every front office will run next spring. And for the rest of us? October baseball now comes with a progress bar.