Major League Baseball pitchers aren’t just throwing fastballs this year, they’re also throwing out shoulders and elbows at nearly double the rate of last season.
Can artificial intelligence slow the trend? The league seems to think so. Ahead of the draft on July 9, it made available to every team a technology from biomechanical company Uplift Labs that can record a prospect’s movement. The data can be used to examine that player’s skills and potential and assess the possibility of future injuries.
Retrieving the information seems to be relatively straightforward. Talent evaluators just need to place a couple of iPhones or iPads on tripods to record a player's movements while he pitches a baseball, for example. However, that simple technology could complicate the business of baseball, making the game homogenized and less dynamic.