Fox Sports analyst C.J. Nitkowski has called enough Major League baseball games in his broadcasting career to understand what his television audience is looking for.
While part of Nitkowski’s job is to inform viewers of what is happening, he prefers to delve deeper into why something is happening. At times, the answer can seem basic. But in other instances, Nitkowski seasons his color commentary with what he calls “nerd food”. Among those nuggets of the game’s deeper-level statistics Nitkowski—a former big-league pitcher who now calls 100 Texas Rangers games per year and another 10 national games for Fox Sports—discovers a unique way of telling stories and taking viewers into a side of the game they perhaps weren’t expecting.
Like many baseball insiders, Nitkowski relies on Remarkable, a patented data storytelling app built by Inside Edge, a technology startup founded more than 30 years ago by Jay Donchetz and Randy Istre. Remarkable not only allows users to effortlessly pull up detailed baseball nuggets out of a wealth of statistical information, but it also shapes the data into digestible pieces, and translates big data into an easy-to-understand, relatable language.
“One of the issues with sabermetrics in general is there’s great information out there,” Nitkowski said. “But how does the audience absorb it? Do they want to absorb it?”
Because more fans are hungry for statistical data than ever before, analysts like Nitkowski need to find the kind of unique information fans crave. That’s part of the beauty of Remarkable, Nitkowski said, for color commentators who depend on the endless pool of knowledge that Remarkable produces for research purposes to back up their own analysis. The tool’s time-saving component is invaluable.
Twenty-five years after the Milwaukee Brewers became the first Major League club to contract with Inside Edge, 20 of the 30 big-league franchises use Inside Edge technology, including 10 that use Remarkable. The information that Remarkable produces ranges from the most basic to unique stats and trends that can often go unnoticed.
Remarkable offers something for everyone, whether broadcasters and other media members, or club officials that use the data on a daily basis for advanced scouting and analytical purposes, and the app shapes the data into whatever form they need.
“We knew what was important was finding the remarkable bits in there,” says Kenny Kendrena, the vice president of product and sales for Inside Edge. “And then [to] present it in a way that was easy to consume.”
The state-of-the-art discovery tool finds interesting insights that are often tough to find without a team of researchers, pulling the interesting statistical information out of a sea of data that can sometimes seem obscure and mundane. But Remarkable also takes the extra step of converting the data for a variety of uses, whether for social media purposes, TV graphic-building or next-level storytelling.
A Competitive Edge
Like his fellow baseball broadcaster Nitkowski, Fox Sports West analyst Jose Mota feeds on any nuggets of statistical knowledge that he can pepper into his game coverage.
Mota, who calls games for the Los Angeles Angels, is always searching for trends in the game that he in turn can translate into expert analysis he can pass on to viewers. While he realizes the importance of conveying what he is seeing in front of him from the broadcast booth, explaining the game in different ways has also become much more of a vital part of his duties than when he started with Fox in 1997.
He’s not alone. In addition to Fox Sports affiliates in 11 different media markets across the country, Remarkable is used by NESN in the Boston area and the Yes Network in New York.
In his more than 20 years in the booth, Mota has had a front-row seat to not only how baseball has changed, but in the way that fans digest the game. But Mota understands he must not only communicate with the viewer at home, he has to do that in a way that will keep his audience engaged.
“As we get educated with all these things, we have to make sure the fan, the viewer, the listener is in-tune with what we’re talking about,” said Mota, a 1985 second-round draft pick of the Chicago White Sox.
“Why is something happening and why is someone that was so bad at something at some point so much better now?” Mota said. “That’s what makes it so intriguing and makes it a bit of a mystery.”
And like Nitkowski, the question Mota seeks to answer most during his broadcasts is not what is happening on the field, but why. Being able to answer that question accurately can vastly improve a broadcast. Having the Remarkable tool to assist in that process, Nitkowski said, gives analysts a competitive edge.
As a member of the Toronto Blue Jays’ media relations department, Rodney Hiemstra’s daily work life is built around baseball information as his responsibilities call for him to put together daily notes packages that broadcasters, beat writers and other media members rely on to do their jobs.
Although information can be found in a number of places, Hiemstra uses Remarkable to tap into statistical territories that might otherwise go unnoticed. The user-friendly aspect of Remarkable teases out interesting, high-level information that is becoming more desirable to fans and fantasy baseball enthusiasts. It also cuts down on the Hiemstra’s workload by presenting the information in an easy-to-understand fashion.
“The demand (for interesting statistical information) is huge,” Hiemstra said. “The information is out there—it’s just a matter of being able to gather it and make it make sense for people.”
Remarkable makes the information that analysts like Nitkowski and Mota rely on to fill a three-hour broadcast not only easily attainable, but often confirms a trend they may be seeing on their own. More and more fans are looking for data-driven aspects of the game that reside well below the surface. Having those shown in ways that make sense is vital.
The challenge of presenting information in usable ways is a major part of Keith O’Brien’s daily work life. O’Brien, who builds graphics for St. Louis Cardinals’ broadcasts on Fox Sports Midwest, appreciates a good piece of statistical information.
But as with broadcasters, O’Brien must be certain that information that pops up on the screen during Cardinals games is not only in line with what broadcasters are talking about, but that it comes across in ways that viewers at home will understand.
In O’Brien’s case, Remarkable not only provides him with advanced stats that can be used in the broadcasts, but seamlessly transforms information into lower-third graphics. That enhances the Fox Sports Midwest production value by providing additional information to the viewer that accompanies the analysis coming from Cardinals broadcasters.
O’Brien appreciates the easy-to-use tool that not only backs up Cardinals broadcasters’ analysis, but that he can weave into what he calls ‘Bar Font.’ Information needs to be appreciated by even the most casual fan watching a game at their favorite neighborhood watering hole. By using Remarkable technology, O’Brien is able to take what might start as a 20-word nugget and turn that even a more digestible bite that he can incorporate into a lower-third graphic for the television viewer to see.
“You’re still trying to kind of convey a message to the general audience and not to just the stat geek,” O’Brien said of trying to maintain reaching a wide audience.
“We try to get (deeper-level data) in, but it has to be somewhat relatable to the audience and something our (broadcasters) can explain concisely.”
Kick-starting the Diagnosis Process
Since he started analyzing statistical information for the Cleveland Indians in 2015, Alex Merberg has found himself diving deeper into the numbers even more.
Merberg now works with the Indians’ major league and minor league coaching staffs to not only provide analysis of how Indians players are performing, but also to give Indians manager Terry Francona and his staff an expert look into the opponents Cleveland will face in an upcoming series.
While big-league teams once relied solely on scouts to provide reports into future opponents, team insiders like Merberg use Remarkable to produce the same detailed reports with much less manpower and time.
Merberg appreciates the way that Remarkable highlights the more unique trends that are happening not only within the Indians organization, but around baseball as a whole. Where scouts once only used basic stats to analyze how a player was performing, the game has become so complex that managers are now looking for any nugget they can find to diagnose exactly what is happening with a player’s approach to his job.
“[Analyzing players] has become a much more robust process,” Merberg said. “It is cool how [Inside Edge is] able to identify some unique trends to help paint the story through [the Remarkable] tool.”
Expanding the Zone
Until now, Inside Edge has focused the reach of Remarkable to its baseball clients. But after seeing its technology utilized so heavily for America’s pastime, the idea of using the same technology to analyze sports like football—both at the college and pro level—has picked up steam.
Inside Edge now has a full-fledged NFL product ready to roll out that is identical to the technology that made its baseball product so successful. In the future, the Remarkable data storytelling technology will be developed for esports, sports betting enthusiasts and various business ventures, including financial markets and company performance, Kendrena said.
The Bloomington, Minnesota based company has always employed analysts who watch games via a satellite feed to chart pitches and break down details like a shortstop’s glove angle or the time a pitcher spends between when he goes into his wind-up and when the ball leaves his hand. So if one game can be dissected so accurately, so can other sports, as the number of fantasy sports fans infatuated with every stat imaginable grows larger every year.
As with baseball, Remarkable will analyze the same detailed information in other sports and allow the user to capture what matters most and simplify that in a way like no other.
“It serves the role of many, many super smart analysts and just keeps coming up with interesting information,” Donchetz said. “It’s much more than a set of notes.”