Pitch prediction, broadcasts produced by robotic technology and even more advanced statistics could soon be coming to your television screen.
Amazon Web Services (AWS) announced Tuesday that it will continue its partnership with Major League Baseball with even greater involvement going forward, as it becomes MLB's official provider for machine learning, artificial intelligence and deep learning workloads.
AWS already holds a close partnership with MLB in regards to its Statcast™ tracking technology, which has revolutionized the baseball experience for fans and front offices alike in how it's shepherded a new understanding of the game. AWS will continue the development of Statcast™ with this extended partnership, while also fostering new technologies that will create interactive fan experiences across the 30 Major League ballparks. The partnership will drive more integration of statistical data into television broadcasts and digital platforms like MLB.com and the MLB At Bat mobile app.
"MLB has been collecting statistical data on its players and clubs for decades, and turned to AWS in 2015 to take its game-day stats to the next level, so that fans can dig deeper into advanced metrics that ultimately enhance enjoyment of the game," said Mike Clayville, AWS' vice president of worldwide commercial sales, as part of an official release issued Tuesday.
"AWS has the broadest and deepest portfolio of cloud services with the best security and proven operational expertise, which is why MLB chose to work with the world's leading cloud to build, run and enhance Statcast™."
Amazon Web Services' machine learning technology should help MLB automate its exhaustive record- and stat-keeping processes -- from box scores to game notes to pitch classifications -- into a more efficient stream moving forward. The company even plans to use its SageMaker and Comprehend products to deliver 21st-century sabermetric analysis of live games in the style of legendary broadcasters of past and present.
"Incorporating machine learning into our systems and practices is a great way to take understanding of the game to a whole new level for our fans and the 30 clubs," said Jason Gaedtke, Major League Baseball's chief technology officer.
"We chose AWS because of their strength, depth and proven expertise in delivering machine learning services and are looking forward to working with the Amazon ML Solutions Lab on a number of exciting projects, including detecting and automating key events, as well as creating new opportunities to share never-before-seen metrics."
Amazon Web Services is in its 13th year of operation, emerging as one of the world's most widely adopted cloud-computing platforms. It has worked in close partnership with MLB since 2014.