Evan Drellich has an in-depth feature in the Houston Chronicle about the Astros’ built-from-scratch private online database, which is now being used by the entire baseball operations department to improve scouting, communicating, and decision-making.
It’s called “Ground Control,” a play on the Astros’ name. The Indians have a similar database called “DiamondView,” the Red Sox call theirs “Carmine,” and the for the Cardinals it’s labeled “Red Bird Dog.”
The Astros feel like their database might be the best-looking and most functional. More from Drellich:Ground Control has an extraordinarily clean interface. There’s nothing intimidating about it for any experienced computer user.
Video of players can be downloaded on the spot, and most anything the baseball operations folks do goes through it - from looking up the history of a player in a foreign country to preparing scouting reports of the Yankees for this season’s opening day.
Projections and the like are updated after every game for which reliable statistics are available, including winter league games in other countries.
“Ground Control” was built by Astros senior technical architect Ryan Hallahan. Read the article here.
