| Finalists

Finalist teams are invited to a showcase weekend at SMT headquarters in Durham, NC to present to a panel of judges (October 30-November 3).​​

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TEAM 10: Andrew Zaletski (UC San Diego)

Through the Batter's Eye: An Interactive Fan Experience on Pitch Identification and Swing Decision

This project delivers an interactive fan contest built for in-stadium, mid-inning play: a real-time pitch guessing game in which the fan watches a real ball-tracking trajectory animate from the mound to the plate, then identifies the pitch type and whether to swing or take. Correct reads on in-zone pitches advance the at-bat, while bad reads, chases, and called strikes count against you, replicating the same pressures a major league hitter faces in the box. Behind the game, a Gaussian Mixture Model trained on velocity, horizontal break, and induced vertical break assigns pitch-type labels to anonymous ball-tracking data, giving each pitcher a simulated arsenal grounded in their real movement patterns.

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TEAM 143: Shravan Agnihotri (Queen's University), Shun Chen (University of Western Ontario), Elliot Sones (Toronto Metropolitan University)

Shift Happens

Shift Happens is a fan-facing jumbotron game, powered by SportsMEDIA Technology (SMT) minor league player-tracking data. The objective of the game is to shift the defensive positioning of your players to improve the chances they catch the ball and make the out. A few times each ballgame, between innings, the jumbotron calls on fans to scan a QR code and step in as the defensive manager for a historical play. Fans are handed real game context before making their call, seeing the batter's handedness and spray chart, along with how fast their outfielders are. With that information, fans are trusted to make the right decision themselves, given thirty seconds to decide how to shift around their players for the upcoming play. When the timer runs out, the jumbotron reveals what actually happened alongside every fan's call, showing exactly how their decision compares to the real outcome. Fans earn points based on how much their positioning helped or hurt the play, factoring in how quickly they locked in their answer. Climb the leaderboard, think critically and decide under pressure, racing to outscore the rest of the stadium and be named Manager of the Night.

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TEAM 204: Ilan Blumenthal (Binghamton University), Benjy Baronofsky, Jonathan Paris (Washington University in St Louis)

It's GO TIME!: Quantifying Tag-Up Reaction Time to Increase Fan Engagement

The outcome of a baseball game is often decided by inches. When a runner on third base tags up, beating the throw home requires more than raw speed, it requires a split-second reaction. In this paper, we uncover the hidden race before the sprint, translating a runner’s reaction time into a dynamic new metric: GO TIME . Using minor league player tracking data, we analyzed 109 competitive tag-up plays to measure the exact delay between the outfielder's catch and the runner's break for home. To make it even more engaging, we developed stadium scoreboard graphics to display a player’s GO TIME and how his GO TIME ranks. The scoreboard graphic also puts players’ times into perspective, using comparisons such as the time it takes to blink, or how fast a fastball reaches the plate. We also created an interactive fan experience where fans can test their own GO TIMEs against other fans and baseball's best. GO TIME leverages advanced player tracking along with an immersive fan experience to offer a deeper insight into baserunning efficiency while also boosting fan engagement.

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• Tea

| Honorable Mentions

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TEAM 88: Ethan Cappelleri, Sam Cowan, Evan Kurtz, Tejas Rama (Boston University)

"Wanna See Me Do it Again?": Dynamic Catch Probability Visualization through ManimGL 

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TEAM 102: Pierre Aucoin (University of Waterloo)

Is It Deep Enough? An Analysis into Sac Fly Distance

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TEAM 107: Theodore J. DeFuria (Northeastern University)

Fair or Foul

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TEAM 111: Aiman Fariz Zaqwan Bin Akmal Hizam (University of Tulsa)

Crowd Call

 

TEAM 144: Amin Nabavi (Carleton University)

Tunnel Vision: Putting Pitch Deception On the Big Screen

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TEAM 158: Reuben Feingold (Colgate University)

Freeze Frame: A "BEAT THE FREEZE" VISUAL 

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TEAM 166: Sonya Lasser (Duke University)

Triangle Tribulations

 

TEAM 227: Shirin Alapati, Jake Crumley, Ethan Nepo (San Jose State University)

Game of Inches: Visualizing the Impact of Outfield Positioning on Catch Probability

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TEAM 308: Evan Delcamp (University of Michigan), Aaron Siminou (Duke University)

Bringing a Gun to a Swordfight:  The Deceptive Art of the Pitchers’ Duel

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