Baseball teams are using AI to judge and predict the future of players

They can only dream of what it's like to burst onto the field in The Big Show on Opening Day, but Purdue University outfielders Cam Thompson and Curtis Washington Jr. are among thousands of college baseball players with access to more data-juiced tech than ever to use in the hopes of getting to the majors. One of the tools their team has tested tracks and visualizes every joint in their bodies to measure and analyze their dynamic movements, helping them become a split-second faster on the base paths or gain an edge on runners when they throw home. "I was the slowest on the team," said Thompson in a video describing Purdue's use of 3D Athlete Tracking, or 3DAT, technology developed by Intel, which captures video footage and applies computer vision and deep learning to digitize an individual player's skeletal data and calculate biomechanics. The data and analytical insights gave Thompson and his coaches information revealing that he was bent over just slightly when launching himself from a base. "To the eye, you might not see this, but those first four or five steps were actually slowing him down," said John Madia, director of Baseball Player Development at Purdue.