Using a few high-tech cameras, some very sophisticated software, Major League Baseball (MLB) is getting ready to revolutionize the world of baseball statistics. A player’s intangibles are becoming a little bit more tangible as its newDigital Eyes Will Chart Baseball’s Unseen Skills.

It looks like after losing its court case to have boxscores and player statistics to be taken out of the public domain (see: Fantasy Sports Win Right to Player Names, Statistics), MLB Advanced Media has found a way to create new statistics that it will own and will license as it sees fit. MLBAM will now have some statistics it can call its very own. MLBAM has not announced how it plans to distribute the data, and how much of the data will be made available to the public, and how much will stay private for use by the teams.

Currently in testing in San Francisco, four high-resolution cameras capture everything on the field in three dimensions. Then, the information is transmitted to a control room where very sophisticated software is able to differentiate a baseball from a runner. Each game produces over two million meaningful location points. These points are then used to determine how much ground an outfield covered, how long it took for a ball to land, how efficiently someone runs the bases, or numerous yet-to-be-thought of statistics. At a cost of $5M, MLBAM plans to have the system rolled out to every major league park by 2010.

From a fantasy perspective, this is just more information to determine if a player is good, or just lucky. More importantly, it might create stats that can be used in fantasy leagues. For the stat heads in the world of fantasy baseball, it may just be information overload.

Now, if we can just use that technology to see if a ball was actually fair or foul…