ESPN has a busy week of baseball ahead, as the MLB Playoffs are set to begin. Monday, the network will air both NL play-in games. The Brewers play the Cubs for the NL Central crown. After that the Dodgers and Rockies will play for the NL West title. The losers of those games aren’t done. They will meet Tuesday night in the NL Wild Card Game.
The network is giving that game a similar treatment to the one it give to marquee college football and basketball games. In addition to the regular broadcast on ESPN, there will be an alternate broadcast, driven by Statcast on ESPN2. The regular Sunday Night Baseball crew will have the call on ESPN. ESPN2 will feature Jason Benetti, Eduardo Perez and MLB.com Statcast writer Mike Petriello.
Statcast is a tool used by all 30 MLB clubs to gather player analytics data. It can measure a player’s movements, tendencies, and athletic abilities. Clubs have usually been unwilling to say exactly how they use the information gathered from Statcast, but MLB Network and MLB.com have been incorporating Statcast information into their coverage since 2015.
