{"id":23991,"date":"2025-05-13T15:23:13","date_gmt":"2025-05-13T15:23:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/23991\/"},"modified":"2025-05-13T15:23:13","modified_gmt":"2025-05-13T15:23:13","slug":"university-of-waterloo-researchers-develop-ai-technology-for-baltimore-orioles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/23991\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Waterloo researchers develop AI technology for Baltimore Orioles"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Baltimore Orioles have called on researchers from the University of Waterloo<\/a> to help them improve their pitching through the use of artificial intelligence<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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PitcherNet uses broadcast camera feeds and combines them with low-resolution footage shot on a smartphone.<\/p>\n

Jerrin Bright, lead researcher on the project, said the AI technology tracks different metrics to analyze a pitcher\u2019s performance.<\/p>\n

\u201cMost specifically, we find 18 joint positions of the human using the Hawk-Eye tracking system, and this skeleton is then basically used to find metrics like the pitching velocity and the spin rate of the ball,\u201d Bright said.<\/p>\n

The Hawk-Eye tracking system has 12 high-speed cameras, which capture images at 200 to 300 frames per second that are played at multiple angles on the baseball grounds.<\/p>\n

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The U of W-designed system extrapolates the pitcher\u2019s entire throwing motion to re-create a level of detail using elaborate and expensive technology installed in most stadiums that host MLB<\/a> teams. Its goal is to fill gaps in the technology and provide data that is typically available to the team that owns the stadium where a game is played, as is the case with Hawk-Eye.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThey wanted to build a system that can basically mimic the sophisticated system like the Hawk-Eye technology itself, but the catch here would be that you wouldn\u2019t have any depth information because we are just going to use single monocular camera and have a coach or a scout be anywhere in the ground, and they\u2019ll be able to capture the data and do analysis of the players,\u201d Bright said.<\/p>\n

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The project began in 2022 when the Orioles organization approached Bright and John Zelek, a professor of systems design engineering at the U of W.<\/p>\n

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Bright said the goal is not to replace humans, but to help elevate a pitcher\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey can use different essential systems to find these metrics, but we are just trying to build this just from a broadcast feed that you can see in your television to try to make it more accessible and easier for the coaches or the scouts,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

The Orioles organization has been very satisfied with the project, according to Bright, resulting in a two-year contract extension with the professional ball club.<\/p>\n

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He said their contract is exclusive to Baltimore and the U of W researchers haven\u2019t collaborated with other MLB teams.<\/p>\n

Bright said the AI technology could be used in other areas of the sport in the future.<\/p>\n

He said the\u00a0AI technology could be expanded to help coaches in amateur leagues and college programs and also help improve scouting.<\/p>\n

\n\t\t&copy 2025 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Baltimore Orioles have called on researchers from the University of Waterloo to help them improve their pitching…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":23992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2374],"tags":[143,47,2538,5,4,125,10257,10256],"class_list":{"0":"post-23991","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-baltimore-orioles","8":"tag-baltimore","9":"tag-baltimore-orioles","10":"tag-baltimoreorioles","11":"tag-baseball","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-orioles","14":"tag-science","15":"tag-university-of-waterloo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/114501216222099650","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23991","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23991"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23991\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23991"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23991"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23991"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}