MLB Will Now Use Sports Wearables During Its Baseball Games

Wearable tech is slowly but effectively making its way to the major leagues and clubs, worldwide. And this time, the technology is officially rooting itself into Major League Baseball fields. This is for the very first time that the sport’s playing rules committee have allowed the use of some devices.

However, the popular Jawbone and Fitbit have not made their way this far. The first wearables honored to be a part of the MLB are Zephyr Bino harness heart and breathing monitor and the popular Motus baseball sleeve.

Apart from the mentioned, the MLB committee has also allowed Blast Motion and Diamond Kinetics. Both are the batting swing sensors. But, the swing sensors will only be utilized on-field during warm-ups, batting practice and training sessions. The idea behind including different wearable technology into the MLB was to reduce the changes of injuries and to look into the health and physical state of the players, closely. All the wearables are baseball centered and are of great use for the professional players.

Coming to the wearables, the Motus sleeve, it has already been approved last year. The wearable has thoroughly been tested by different MLB teams. The baseball sleeve utilizes a sensor module that stops the players from throwing their arm out. The device helps pitchers in analyzing and accessing their performance.

Next, in the list is the Zephyr monitor. It is usually built into the shirts of the athletes. With the help of embedded device, coaches and trainers can easily access the heart rate, posture feasibility, breathing rate and activity level of the players. The wearable is of great use as it can easily monitor different aspects like heart rate variability etc. Getting the heart rate data helps in determining the stress level of the player. This could massively impact the routine recovery of players after a game.

However, all the data acquired with the help of these wearables will only be assessed by the team after the game. Data will be shared with the player only and will be assessed internally as well. Measures would be taken in order to restrict the data into the hands of the concerned only. It would be harmful if the data of one player gets’ into the hands of other.

MLB has been the first sports league to get the help of wearable tech during the game through a proper channel. But, major US sports have already adopted the use of wearables. NFL is already using wearables to get rid of the concussion problems of the wearers. On the other hand, NBA teams like the Golden State Warriors are rendering the services of Catapult Sports devices to monitor performance in training.

The use of such fine wearables during the baseball games and practices of MLB will be highly beneficial for the players and the coaches. Let’s see what changes will this tech bring into the baseball and the other sports worldwide and how will it affect athletes and their performances!