New Toy For “Strike Zone Awareness”
April 12th, 2016
New spending
Your Rays have joined the virtual reality kick.
Computer simulations have become the rage in Tampa Bay’s pro sports scene.
Last summer, the Bucs announced the use of simulator software as a supplement to their quarterbacks’ on-field work. Then last week, the Rays announced a partnership with the same sports training company, EON Sports VR, to help batters sharpen their cuts.
Here’s how Digital Trends describes the new toy:
“The Rays will use a simulator from EON Sports VR called the iCube, a 10-ft. x 10-ft. x 10-ft. box. Players get to practice swinging, with 30 VR at-bats, against a virtual pitcher that mimics a vast array of human MLB pitchers. One pitch may be a 90 mile per hour fastball from San Francisco Giants ace Madison Bumgarner and the next could be New York Yankees star Masahiro Tanaka’s dangerous splitter coming down across the virtual plate. …
“Batters are trained in two specific areas: strike zone awareness and pitch tracking. For strike zone awareness, the batter deduces which pitches thrown were balls and which were strikes after each at-bat. For pitch tracking, batters will have to do the same, but in this case will have to decide if each pitch was a fastball, slider, curve ball, or change up.”
It sounds like the Rays have pulled out all the stops to produce more boom with their bats this season. This should come as little surprise, given how the franchise always has been on the cutting edge of unorthodox strategies.
Time will show if all the VR love will lead to more action in the win column.
April 13th, 2016 at 2:52 pm
Some one sign up the Dynamic Duo, Miller and Morrison, for this Virtual Reality gizmo.
The reality is that adding their batting averages together won;t even get to an anemic .100.
Where’s Loney???
April 13th, 2016 at 4:07 pm
Miguel – You stole my thunder. I’d send these 2 turds back to Seattle for a bucket of balls. Hell, they could be used balls. Let’s see. we replaced a .290 hitter who’s a vacuum cleaner at 1st with a mope that can’t hit.050 and muffing balls either hit to him or thrown to him. Then we got a “major league ” shortstop that never learned how to throw to 1st. I saw him in a spring training game where twice the 1st basemen (not named Logan Morrison) bailed him out on throws in the dirt and one throw that sailed into the runner for an error. Loney is in the San Diego minors waiting to be called up. It’s past time. Make a call and get him back here ! Hell, We are paying him 8 million just the same either way. This is just beyond silly !