Combining Radar and Optical Sensor Data to Measure Player Value in Baseball

Evaluating a player’s talent level based on batted balls is one of the most important and difficult tasks facing baseball analysts. An array of sensors has been installed in Major League Baseball stadiums that capture seven terabytes of data during each game. These data increase interest among spectators, but also can be used to quantify the performances of players on the field. The weighted on base average cube model has been used to generate reliable estimates of batter performance using measured batted-ball parameters, but research has shown that running speed is also a determinant of batted-ball performance. In this work, we used machine learning methods to combine a three-dimensional batted-ball vector measured by Doppler radar with running speed measurements generated by stereoscopic optical sensors. We show that this process leads to an improved model for the batted-ball performances of players.