Charley Walters: Artificial intelligence coming soon to a baseball team near you - St. Paul Pio...

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Charley Walters: Artificial intelligence coming soon to a baseball team near you - St. Paul Pioneer Press

Slide over analytics. Make room for artificial intelligence (AI). It’s for real. It’s coming.
How could it work for the Minnesota Twins?
“It’s funny you asked that — it’s a great question and it’s something I think the whole world is unpacking at the same time,” Twins baseball chief Derek Falvey said the other day. “The speeding up of the development of AI in the last six months of our lives is something we’re all trying to unpack,” he continued. “I don’t have an answer today for it. We’re thinking about it — how does it help us, where can we look at it.
“There’s areas where it naturally fits, when you’re building systems or tools to help you assess player talent or look at stats. We’re already building models that project, ‘What’s this player going to do in the future?’ We’ve been building models forever, where do players play on the field, positioning.”
That’s analytics. “You look at where guys have weaknesses in their zones, where the pitches go, where they swing and miss,” Falvey said. “So it helps you with team planning and those things. That’s true in every sport.”
But, Falvey wonders, “How does AI amplify that? None of us know yet. Are there ways that AI can help you look at that data in a way that we haven’t before? I don’t have an answer to that because we don’t have the tools to do it.” For now.
“But there’s probably something coming based on the rapid escalation of the use of AI that will show up in sports at some point,” Falvey said. “Everyone’s thinking about it. We’re studying with human beings right now and trying to understand what the data tells us. Maybe there’s ways to actually study it with us even knowing what it’s studying. It’s fascinating.”
How might AI transfer to the field?
“Think about it in this context — a guy hits a thousand baseballs over the course of a few seasons,” Falvey said. “All that data exists as to where he hit them, how hard he hit them and where they go directionally. Right now, we plot that on a sheet that shows you a map. Same in basketball — it’s a shot chart where guys make shots from, where they don’t.
“So we have to study that data now and decide where’s our right fielder’s going to play; here’s where our left fielder’s going to play. That’s what we do. There could be a more machine-oriented version of studying that to say, ‘Actually, for this pitcher, for this hitter, the right balance is actually here because of the way he throws his fastball, or because of the way he throws his breaking ball.
“There’s ways that we can’t even comprehend that’s so multi-dimensional. That could be how (AI) works in the future.”
— The 3M Open at TPC Twin Cities in Blaine is contracted through 2026. Hollis Cavner, who runs the PGA Tour tournament, said 3M’s recent $10.3 billion lawsuit settlements over water systems contamination won’t affect the tournament’s future.
“Doesn’t affect us at all — that’s a totally separate issue with corporate,” he said.
— Mike Antonovich, the former Greenway High, Gopher, Minnesota Fighting Saint and North Star and mayor of hometown Coleraine, Minn., is recovering after a heart attack last week.
“I’m doing good — I’m very fortunate,” Antonovich said. “I always told my buddies I was invincible. Now I’m not.”
Antonovich, 71, who is among Minnesota’s best-ever high school players, started playing senior hockey a couple times a week in Coleraine for exercise and fun during the COVID outbreak a few years ago.
“I didn’t know what the symptoms were,” he said. “When I played, I had a cough in my chest — I thought it was just because of the cold. Then when I worked out, I could feel something in my chest. It wasn’t sharp or anything. It would go away.
“But when it (heart attack) happened, I was working out in the basement. Nobody was home. When I came up the stairs, there was a little more pain in there. I tried to walk it off, and that didn’t work. Then my wife showed up and she knew what was going on. So she got some aspirin in me.”
Antonovich, who is an amateur scout for Minnesota for the Columbus Blue Jackets, was flown by helicopter from Grand Rapids to St. Luke’s Hospital in Duluth, where he received a stent.
“Got there in a hurry — they basically they saved my life,” he said.
Antonovich turns 72 in October.
“If somebody told me I’d still be touc...