Mike Petriello grew up a baseball obsessed kid in New Jersey. He rooted for the Los Angeles Dodgers\u2014\u201cbecause the Yankees were terrible in the \u201980s\u201d\u2014and played Little League. \u201cBaseball has been it since day one,\u201d he says. He went to BU in part because of its proximity to Fenway Park, although a career in the game didn\u2019t seem realistic in the late 1990s.<\/p>\n Petriello (CAS\u201903) majored in history and worked in video production after graduation. He began writing about the Dodgers in 2007 as a hobby. \u201cAt that time, talking about stats was unusual,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd what I was trying to do was talk about them in a way that was filled with Simpsons jokes\u2014accessible and entertaining and not sounding like algebra class.\u201d That mix of humor and hard data attracted attention in the burgeoning world of baseball blogs. Petriello landed assignments from analytically inclined sites like the Hardball Times<\/em> and FanGraphs<\/a><\/em>, and from ESPN. When his ESPN editor jumped to Major League Baseball (MLB), he offered Petriello a freelance gig covering Statcast, the advanced statistics technology the league was developing.<\/p>\n Now MLB\u2019s director of stats and research, Petriello is at the heart of baseball\u2019s data revolution. Over the past decade, MLB has introduced technologies that quantify everything from the mesmerizing 20-inch horizontal break of a Paul Skenes sweeper to the record-breaking 122.9 mile-per-hour velocity of the ball off Oneil Cruz\u2019s bat.<\/p>\n The data the league collects can help players train more effectively, allow teams to better scout opponents and evaluate talent, and even be used to identify injuries. The same digital technology that produces this data has also placed professional baseball on the cusp of one of the biggest changes in the history of the game: so-called robo umpires, which were used during the 2025 MLB All-Star Game, and will be used in a limited role in the 2026 regular season.<\/p>\n And when the league rolls out a new statistic or metric, Petriello is responsible for introducing it to the public. \u201cIf I had to pick one word to describe what I do, it would be \u2018translator,\u2019\u201d he says.<\/p>\n In the early 2000s, officials within MLB started to consider the audacious goal of creating a new generation of stats that could quantify every movement on a baseball field. The only problem was, the technology didn\u2019t exist yet.<\/p>\n The first big step in that direction came in 2007. The league installed PITCHf\/x cameras in all 30 major league ballparks, recording the velocity, location, and type of every pitch. In 2015, the league added a radar-based system that could measure the velocity of the ball off the bat and calculate the distance of a home run. High-speed Hawk-Eye cameras have since allowed them to measure things like batters\u2019 body positions and pitchers\u2019 arm angles.<\/p>\n By 2015, MLB already had a roster of in-house writers covering local and national beats, but they needed someone fluent in baseball metrics to write about Statcast. As the league prepared to release its first new metrics to the public, it hired Petriello. Over time, he has become much more than a writer. He collaborates with the league\u2019s engineers and data scientists, developing new stats. \u201cAny of us can come up with an idea,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd it always starts with crafting what the thing should be, what story we\u2019re trying to tell. Is it going to be presented in a percent or in time or in distance?\u201d Done well, that information helps everyone interested in baseball\u2014from the fans in the stands to the players on the field\u2014understand the game better.<\/p>\n Raw Statcast data is shared with all 30 MLB teams who feed it into proprietary systems they use for player development and scouting. This can help pitchers design new pitches, hitters reinvent their swings, and fielders position themselves optimally. \u201cThey\u2019re using this information to help some of the best athletes on the planet get better,\u201d Petriello says.<\/p>\n If I had to pick one word to describe what I do, it would be \u2018translator.\u2019<\/p>\n MLB makes some of this information available to the public via its Baseball Savant<\/a> website. There, with a few clicks, readers can splice data in countless ways\u2014sorting leaderboards, looking at heat maps of individual player tendencies, and scrolling through futuristic box scores. No coding background needed. They can also read the analysis of MLB writers like Petriello.<\/p>\n When the Statcast team unveils new metrics, Petriello typically writes an introductory story that\u2019s packed with video clips and graphics to explain the stats and showcase the players who are best at the skills they quantify. In March, he used new data to highlight baseball\u2019s most extreme batting stances<\/a>. Who stands closest to home plate or farthest away? Which batters take the largest stride toward the pitcher or barely any stride at all? Two months later, he introduced metrics\u2014including swing path and attack angle<\/a>\u2014that describe the shape of a hitter\u2019s swing.<\/p>\n \u201cAcross the sport, players are using data and technology to improve their own games,\u201d Petriello wrote. \u201cAll you have to do is just listen to them tell you about it.\u201d He quoted the Arizona Diamondbacks star Corbin Carroll, who had adjusted his attack angle\u2014the angle of the bat\u2019s path as it meets the ball\u2014between his lackluster first half of 2024 and his strong second half and start to 2025.<\/p>\n While Baseball Savant may be a sandbox for only the most analytically inclined fans, Petriello is also a resource for the frontlines of baseball media: the beat writers and broadcasters who cover baseball daily.<\/p>\n Boog Sciambi, play-by-play announcer for the Chicago Cubs and ESPN, says he feels an obligation to explain advanced metrics to his audience\u2014and he receives a weekly info packet from Petriello for ESPN Radio\u2019s Sunday Night Baseball<\/em> broadcasts to help him do so. \u201cThat\u2019s the way front offices are building their rosters,\u201d Sciambi says. \u201cThis is the stuff that matters.\u201d<\/p>\n Jason Benetti, television play-by-play announcer for the Detroit Tigers, says, \u201cMike is brilliant at finding the information which tells the story of why each player is on the field. He makes the analytical human.\u201d<\/p>\n It\u2019s a critical skill, given the overwhelming amount of information that MLB collects. Baseball\u2019s statistical story used to be recorded by hand; now it\u2019s parsed from terabytes of data. The Hawk-Eye system records every game with a dozen cameras recording 50 or 300 frames per second\u2014that\u2019s more than 110,000 frames per minute for two-plus hours each game. That gives the Statcast team a massive collection of data to work with.<\/p>\n As the 2025 season unfolded, they followed up their new swing metrics with data about catcher stances, and Petriello was already looking ahead to new stats that would quantify which pitches miss the bat by the most.<\/p>\n MLB has experimented with using Hawk-Eye for some ball-and-strike calls. In 2026, the league will introduce the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) system to regular season games by allowing players to challenge umpire calls on the field. ABS is sure to change the game in complicated ways\u2014but Petriello and his colleagues will be there to explain the how and why.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"\/cas\/files\/2025\/11\/Magazine-images_Page_18-477x636.jpg\")
Big (League) Data<\/h6>\n
Promoting the Future of the Game<\/h6>\n
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