Robots replicate reality: High-tech pitching machine mimics every pitcher

TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Nestor Cortes got behind the plate in a batting cage and watched an 8-foot-high, 1,200-pound robot spit out fastballs, cutters and sweepers just like the ones spinning off the fingertips of his left hand.

“It was like seeing myself pitch. That was crazy,” the New York Yankees All-Star left-hander said.

Technology has come a long way since the days of the Iron Mike.

The Trajekt Arc pitching machine uses baseball's high-tech data to mimic the way balls break from every big league pitcher and has been approved by Major League Baseball for in-game use this year in batting cages. Using video of deliveries and data, the robot allows a hitter to step in against recreated offerings from any pitcher he wants to face. Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani said he used Trajekt to view his pitches from a different vantage point.

“You’re training their brain. You’re training their eyes,” Philadelphia hitting coach Kevin Long said.

The Trajekt Arc pitching machine is demonstrated during the Major League Baseball winter meetings Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Each machine costs $15,000 to $20,000 a month as part of a three-year lease, an unimaginable leap forward from the pitching gun invented by Princeton mathematics professor Charles Howard Hinton in 1896 that looked like a 2 1/2-foot-long cannon.

Paul Giovagnoli turned the concept into a business. He owned golf driving ranges in Wichita and Topeka, Kansas, wanted to add baseball and created what become known as the Iron Mike. Giovagnoli founded Master Pitching Machine in 1952, and its units with long metal arms became omnipresent throughout the majors.

By the mid-1970s, machines with spinning wheels entered the market, the better to replicate breaking balls, and the Yankees had three at $1,600 each at spring training in 1978.

Those models have gone the way of flannel uniforms.

Spinball Sports’ iPitch Smart Machine retails for $14,000 and is programmed with 16 built-in pitchers with 140 pitches. Company sales manager Sam Root says there are more than 100 of its iPitch machines among 27 MLB teams and units are at 15 Division I college conferences.

SportsAttack’s Elite eHack Attack comes with fastballs, changeups, split-fingers and right and left curveballs and sliders, and allows customized pitches and storage for 20 favorites. It retails for $14,999.

A laptop is used to demonstrate the Trajekt Arc pitching machine during the Major League Baseball winter meetings Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

Joshua Pope took it a step further. He was a senior at TanenbaumCHAT high school in Toronto in 2014 and was talking with friends about how many swings it would take for them to get a hit off Marcus Stroman, then a top Toronto Blue Jays rookie. Having had a couple shoulder surgeries, Pope knew his career wouldn’t be as an athlete. He applied to the University of Waterloo in Ontario in part because John McPhee, a mechanical engineering professor there, had developed a hockey slapshot robot.

“We had a theoretical modeling approach to how we could create a machine to replicate gyro spin,” Pope said.

Data was publicly available. MLB installed Sportvision’s PITCHf/x in 2006 and then its more detailed Statcast system for 2015, which runs on Hawk-Eye data. All teams get Hawk-Eye, and some now supplement it with information from KinaTrax Motion Capture, Simi Reality Motion Systems and DARI Motion.

During his five-year college program, Pope received a grant of $60,000 Canadian and raised financing to built a prototype. He became CEO of the new company founded in 2019 and recruited Rowan Ferrabee, a Waterloo mechatronics engineering student, to be chief technology officer. They originally called their firm SimulatePro but changed it to Trajekt Sports — Traject with a normal spelling was taken and they liked the K because of its use for strikeouts in baseball scoring.

Working at Velocity, a startup hub in Kitchener, Ontario, from April 2019 to March 2020 — and then in the garage of Pope's parents after the coronavirus pandemic began — they developed a machine that controls 11 of 12 degrees of freedom for pitches, maintaining only a fixed release point of 56 1/2 feet from the plate.

A baseball travels through the Trajekt Arc pitching machine as it is demonstrated at the Major League Baseball winter meetings Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

They presented a demo of the ball inserter and user interface at the 2019 winter meetings, and Chicago Cubs director of Innovation Bobby Basham agreed to a three-week spring training trial in 2021. Trajekt reached deals for seven teams in 2022 and now has 20 teams with about 45 machines — including a club in Japan that started last season. Until this year, MLB limited use to before and after games.

Trajekt trains a team’s data and video staff and sends two people for installation, which takes a day or two. Teams appear to prefer using softer Rawlings L10 training balls to lessen broken bats.

Phillies All-Star catcher JT Realmuto spends about an hour before each game going over the data on opposing hitters, writing notes that he takes to the dugout and reviews before each defensive half inning.

“It’s cool to see how far data driven baseball things have come,” Realmuto said. “Obviously, analytics are a huge part of our game now. Analytics were going on 20 years ago, it’s just we didn’t really know how to understand it and how to transfer it into real time.”

MLB began regulating on-field technology in 2016 and has approved six products for in-game, on-field use this year: 4D Motion’s kinematic/movement tracker, Catapult’s GPS tracker, STATSports’ GPS tracker, Pulse’s Motus Sleeve that measures biomechanics and heart monitors from WHOOP and Zephyr. In addition, two bat sensors from Blast Motion and two from Diamond Kinetics are approved for on-field use during workouts.

The Trajekt Arc pitching machine is demonstrated during the Major League Baseball winter meetings Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

“It’s a lot of vetting. It’s important to keep your eyes on emerging technologies but it requires a lot of work,” Phillies general manager Sam Fuld said. “It’s not as simple as snapping your fingers and investing in a piece of technology that looks interesting. You’ve got to make sure you’re making the right choice because with it comes a lot of human capital that’s needed to operate the tech. If there’s data associated with the tech, there’s a lot of bandwidth required to make meaning of that data.”

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Baseballs wait to be sent through The Trajekt Arc pitching machine as the device is demonstrated during the Major League Baseball winter meetings Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

The Trajekt Arc pitching machine is demonstrated during the Major League Baseball winter meetings Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

The Trajekt Arc pitching machine is demonstrated during the Major League Baseball winter meetings Wednesday, Dec. 6, 2023, in Nashville, Tenn. Trajekt uses data to mimic the way balls spin and break from big league pitchers and has for the first time been approved by Major League Baseball for in-game use this year in batting cages. (AP Photo/George Walker IV)

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — A Pennsylvania court on Tuesday ruled 6-1 that the secretary of state has the authority to direct counties not to allow “unauthorized third party access” to voting machines or risk having those machines decertified and unable to be deployed for elections.

The Commonwealth Court said the Department of State does not have to reimburse counties when they decertify machines, a defeat for Fulton County in a dispute that arose after two Republican county commissioners permitted Wake Technology Services Inc. to examine and obtain data from Dominion voting machines in 2021.

That led the state elections agency to issue a directive against such third-party access based on concerns it could compromise security. Fulton's machines were decertified as a result of the Wake TSI examination and the secretary of state was sued by the county as well as Republican county commissioners Randy Bunch and Stuart Ulsh.

Fulton had argued it had broad authority over the voting machines, while the secretary of state said that “would mean that every county board of elections can do whatever it wants” with electronic voting systems under their authority to inspect elections, “an absurd and unreasonable result,” wrote Judge Renee Cohn Jubelirer for the majority.

She said a 1937 state election law gave county election boards broad power, but state lawmakers amended it “to give the secretary an important role in ensuring statewide consistency and safety” regarding electronic voting systems. The state and local power balance over elections and voting equipment, the majority said, helps “protect and provide for free and fair and secure elections.”

“There is no conflict between those provisions, and it is entirely possible — indeed necessary — for county boards of elections to fulfill their powers and duties while heeding the secretary’s report and directives,” Jubelirer wrote for the majority.

The Department of State issued a statement saying it was pleased with the decision and that the adminstration of Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro “is committed to ensuring the free and secure administration of elections, and today’s decision recognizes that the secretary is empowered to keep voting systems secure from unauthorized third-parties seeking to undermine confidence in Pennsylvania’s elections.”

The Fulton County board, through chief clerk Stacey Shives, declined comment about the decision. Messages seeking comment were left Tuesday for Fulton County's lawyers, Tom Carroll and Jim Stein.

The officials in Fulton, a 15,000 population county in rural central Pennsylvania, brought in Wake TSI and allowed another outside inspection as part of an effort to find the sort of election fraud that then-President Donald Trump falsely claimed existed after his 2020 reelection loss. Fulton heavily supported Trump in all three of his presidential campaigns. Ulsh is no longer an elected county commissioner.

Fulton replaced the voting machines, which were impounded by the court during the dispute over allowing others to access them.

FILE - Thomas Breth, front, a lawyer for Fulton County, Pa., stands with other county officials and explains that the state Supreme Court had just put their voting machine inspection on hold before it started in McConnellsburg, Pa., Friday, Jan. 14, 2022. (AP Photo/Marc Levy, File)