The Boston Red Sox have won their last 13 games, tied for the 2nd longest win streak in their long, storied franchise history. A feat they last accomplished in 1948. Needless to say, the energy has shifted at Fenway Park this past month as the team is experiencing one of their most successful runs as a ball club. 

Of course, many things go into winning and losing baseball games both on the field and behind the scenes every day. And baseball front offices, perhaps more so than any other professional sport in the world, pride themselves on “winning on the margins.” 

The infamous “moneyball” concept by Billy Beane, the former GM of the Oakland A’s, is one clear example. Beane used sabermetrics in the early 2000’s to identify and acquire undervalued players whose skills were statistically valuable but overlooked by traditional scouts. His success from this approach allowed a smaller-market team to compete with the wealthier franchises. 

As the style of the game has gotten more physically demanding, and technology has continued to develop, player tracking has become one of the most recent examples where MLB front offices are trying to “win on the margins.” 

Major League Baseball is a grueling 162 game regular season (plus spring training and postseason). The average length of a game is just under 3 hours, and the pace of the game continues to get faster and faster with pitch clocks and other rule changes that speed up the intensity of the game. As the demands of professional baseball continue to increase, the importance of managing physical load has simultaneously heightened. 

This off-season the Red Sox invested in PlayerData in order to help their S&C and Sport Science departments get a better gauge on their player tracking. 

Craig Breslow, the Red Sox Chief Baseball Officer, says:

“The ever-evolving and ultra-competitive landscape that is professional sports has forced us to rethink how we track player performance, and more importantly how we quickly assess and derive actionable insights from that data. PlayerData’s innovative platform enables us to push our athletes forward more safely and responsibly than ever before.”

The PlayerData system is unique in the GPS market in several ways:

• The battery life is 10 hours allowing athletes to wear it all day without any issues, even for doubleheaders.
• The tech infrastructure sends raw data straight to the cloud, providing the ability for coaches to see what’s going on at their Dominican Republic, or AAA ballpark in real time from anywhere in the world.
• The unit is one third the size of other devices on the market, enhancing player comfort and buy-in.
• The system fully operates without the need for a laptop, making it highly transportable and easy for staff across all levels to use.

While no single technology wins baseball games, championship organizations are built on thousands of small decisions that collectively create an edge. As the Red Sox continue one of the most exciting stretches in franchise history, their investment in cutting-edge performance technology reflects a broader commitment to innovation across every level of the organization. By equipping coaches and sport science staff with faster, more actionable insights into athlete performance and workload, PlayerData is proud to support the Red Sox's pursuit of sustained excellence and find new ways to win on the margins.

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