Major League Baseball is partnering with San Francisco-based tech giant New Relic to highlight how data and analytics impact the games we love to watch and play.
The two organizations have worked together in the past, with MLB’s technology arm using New Relic software for its internal needs. Now they are publicly teaming up to promote the use of data in baseball and business.
As a result of the partnership, MLB will host a segment called “Digging into the Data” on MLB Network that explores how data and analytics are being utilized in baseball today — it will also run as a full-on series for MLB.com. There will also be technology-focused events hosted by New Relic and MLB in ballparks around the country this season.
New Relic raised $215 million since launching in 2007 and went public in December 2014. The company, now worth around $1.5 billion, helps customers understand how users are interacting with their software in real time, providing data related to user click streams, mobile activity, end user experiences, transactions, and more. New Relic’s stock is down 25 percent in the past year and trading just above its IPO price of $23 per share. It closed its Seattle office in February, moving employees down to its Portland engineering center.
MLB certainly ranks among the top professional sports leagues in terms of how its teams and players utilize data to improve performance (i.e. Moneyball). Each front office now has at least some analytics-focused employees crunching data, and it’s essentially become a requirement for teams to apply some type of analytical process to their business.
The league also last month inked a multi-year deal with Apple that will allow managers to use iPads as a way to analyze player data during games in the dugout and training.
Editor’s note: This story was updated to reflect that New Relic closed its Seattle office in February.
