OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) — Oakland Ballers manager Aaron Miles will leave it to artificial intelligence to decide when to pinch hit or replace his pitcher.
The playoff-bound Ballers of the independent Pioneer League are turning to AI to manage most aspects of Saturday’s home game against the Great Falls Voyagers at Raimondi Park. So it might feel almost like a day off for the skipper, whose lineup and in-game decisions will even be made for him — from a tablet he will have in the dugout providing instructions.
The starting pitcher is already set.
“Luckily it’s only game. Maybe we’ve done so well that the AI will just keep doing what we’re doing,” Miles joked Wednesday. “Being a 70-win team we’ve got a very good bench. It’s hard to write a lineup without leaving somebody out that’s really good. This game I’ll be like, ‘Hey, it’s not on me for not writing you in there, it’s on the computer.’ It won’t be my fault if somebody’s not in the lineup, I guess I’ll enjoy that.”
Yet Miles knows he still might have to step in with some lineup adjustments, because the human element still matters when it comes to someone who could need rest or take a break because of injury or other circumstances.
Co—founder Paul Freedman said the second-year club will produce the first AI-powered professional sporting event. It happens to be Fan Appreciation day, too.
Last year, during the Ballers’ inaugural season, they had a game in which fans wrote the lineup and chose the uniforms — but Oakland lost. So the Ballers are doing it differently this time by partnering with AI company Distillery to control almost everything.
“The AI won’t be able to do third-base coaching, we don’t have the technology for that yet,” Freedman said. “The human will be responsible for waving somebody home or throwing up the hand. But those kind of situational decisions, we will look to the machine to make the call.”
Freedman figures with the Ballers having locked up the top seed for playoffs, this is a perfect opportunity to give AI a try.
And no need for Miles to be concerned with job security, even with the greater potential for Monday-morning quarterbacking when it comes to his moves.
“The good news is Aaron has won 100 games for us and right now our winning percentage is well over 75%, I think his job is pretty safe,” Freedman said. “And we’re happy with the decisions he’s made, but we do think it’s cool. One of the fun things about being a sports fan is being able to engage in conversations after the game about the key decisions. So this is a breadcrumb for us for what we think could be something if it works well could be part of a fan experience application or something that we do where after a game we kind of highlight what the key decisions were that our manager made and which ones kind of went against the grain — either for right or wrong.”
Miles has already experimented with AI a couple of times but earlier this season one roster showed up as the 2024 group. He expects AI might end up making a smarter decision just based on real-time data.
“I fooled around with this before just for fun, now it’s for real,” he said, “for one game.”
Ballers catcher Tyler Lozano is open-minded to incorporating new elements into the game to complement the analytics — as long as the treasured traditions aren’t lost.
“It’s immersive, it’s definitely involving new technology, new everything. It’s interesting to see what an AI platform or AI software can do for a baseball team,” Lozano said. “There’s always going to be a human element in the game of baseball. I think in sports period there’s going to be some type of human element because you’re live, you’re there. These AI platforms aren’t watching the game or don’t see all of the intricate moments that happen throughout the game and the human element of the player. I don’t think you’re going to lose that.”
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