Texas Rangers general manager Jon Daniels believes that when it comes to baseball, all information is good information.
That theory may be tested next season.
Sportvision, the company that invented the yellow first-down marker for television football broadcasts, is working on technology that will track virtually every movement a player makes on a major-league diamond.
The system is being tested by the San Francisco Giants this year, and could be in every big-league park next season. If the system works like it's supposed to, there will be little guesswork left in the game.
The time it takes an outfielder to get to a ball will be measured in hundredths of a second and the speed he gets there will be measured in miles per hour.
"Every moving event within an actual game will be tracked," said Sportvision general manager of baseball products Ryan Zander. "When a ball's hit into the gap, we will know everything the pitcher did. We'll know where the ball landed and be able to tell where every player moved. The new system will track everything."
Sportvision already has made a huge impact in the game. Every time Tom Grieve or Josh Lewin questions a strike call on a television broadcast, they double-check it on the PITCHf/x Pitch Tracking program.
But the new system takes into account everyone on the field, providing teams with a mind-numbing amount of information if they choose to use it.
"Every club and every individual has to decide how much they want to use and how they want to apply it," Daniels said. "I'm sure some teams may use it more than others. It's not like we don't already have components of what it offers. We probably don't have the packages the same way they're able to do it and the kind of consistency from park to park that they will."
The system will require between two and four cameras. That, plus the software and an operator will be all that's required to run the product.
Todd Walther, the Rangers' assistant for player development and scouting, is the team's representative working with Sportvision.
Walther said there are still some things that have to be worked out before the system is used. The biggest is the cost, which could reach $5 million. Sportvision hopes Major League Baseball will pick up the tab.
Whether or not the fans will have access to the data hasn't been determined.
There's also the question of how the product will affect the advance scouts who are at every park.
"I don't think it will replace scouts," Zander said. "It will assist them to make their jobs better and jobs easier. It can confirm things that they're seeing and bring things to their attention."
Texas outfielder Marlon Byrd puts more faith in a human than a computer. But Byrd also doesn't think there's anything out there that can take all the mystery out of baseball.
"Even with scouts that are watching me, they aren't going to see intangibles," he said. "A computer's not going to see that either. A computer's not going to see what we do in the clubhouse. It's not going to see us in the batting cages. It's not going to see us in the video room. There's a lot more to the game than what one person or a computer sees."
Byrd's right about that. For now.