For most MLB players, like Chris Owings’ first seven years in the majors, he could pop into the video room to take a look at his at-bats during a game. However that all changed last season, and the utility infielder for the Colorado Rockies had to make due with a printout.
“You’d come back in the dugout and you’d say, ‘Hey where was that pitch at?'” Owings said in a recent interview. “It would be like it is on the MLB app, where it just shows where the pitch crossed the plate. You go from seeing every pitch where it crossed, where your swing was, to just being able to see where the pitch was on a piece of paper.”
For decades, baseball players retreated to a clubhouse video room to check out their at-bats or take a closer look at a reliever entering a game. Then Houston was penalized in January 2020 for an electronic sign-stealing scheme during the Astros’ run to the 2017 World Series title and again in the 2018 season. The coronavirus pandemic also led baseball to limit clubhouse access.
It was a jarring change for some hitters during a down year for offense during the pandemic-shortened season. But Major League Baseball has cleared the way for the return of in-game video on dugout iPads beginning on opening day, with catcher signals clipped when they are displayed on a computer.
“It definitely made it a little more difficult for hitters,” Texas Rangers outfielder David Dahl said. “You can’t go back and look at where was that pitch, how are they throwing me, what my timing looked like, little things like that that I checked out in the past.”
Chicago White Sox manager Tony La Russa, hired in October, likes how players will be in the dugout with the iPads rather than going back to the video room. La Russa said, “If you’re always going in the clubhouse to watch your at-bat and then you come out after three outs, you lose a sense of the game.. I think the fact that they would have it in the dugout is a step in the right direction.”
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