Milwaukee.Brewers.MLB.com

By JR Radcliffe / Special to MLB.com

Mike Adams (seated) is one of the players to benefit from Joe Crawford and BATS. (Jill Stolt Photography)

It's the type of pitch most preferred by an opposing pitcher with runners at the corners. It's the location of a fastball with two strikes. It's the direction of every ground ball hit by a certain batter with the bases loaded.

And for the Brewers, it's all compiled by two guys.

"I think the hardest part about it is finding good people who have the detail and focus to chart the games," said baseball operations assistant Karl Mueller, one of the team's two video footage gurus in charge of processing and filtering the team's vast collection of baseball data.

"The game takes three hours to play; it takes these guys three hours to chart it."

But charting, and then interpreting, is what Mueller and video coordinator Joe Crawford do. For 2004, these two new faces and the addition of the Baseball Analysis Tracking System (BATS) software to the team's clubhouse have introduced a high-tech approach to Milwaukee's advance scouting and self-correction.

"I just paid attention, I didn't go to school for it," said Crawford, a former big league pitcher who spent time in Milwaukee's Spring Training before the 2000 season. "The big draw for me to the job was the scouting part of it, the being on the field and learning from the coaches part of it.

"It wasn't like I wanted to be this technically-savvy guy, but I learned it because that's the way everything is going. Everything's leaning towards that in baseball now, so you want to know it."

Crawford, a left-hander who posted a 4-3 record and 3.30 ERA in 47 innings with the New York Mets in 1997 before spending two years in Japan's Pacific League, also throws batting practice and serves as an on-field liaison between the players and the equipment in the clubhouse video room, right next door to the tunnel leading to the Brewers dugout.

"Most of them, I'd say 99 percent of [players], know how to use it and want to use it, and do it very well," Crawford said. "They all kind of use it in their own different way."

"What we determined is that advance scouting, in the old sense of the word, wasn't cost-effective or efficient," said Brewers assistant general manager Gord Ash, who along with general manager Doug Melvin brought Crawford and Mueller on board. "With the technological advancements now, we have the ability to take that data and manipulate it into usable information."

Ash said it was Mueller who brought BATS, a software system engineered by a Grand Rapids corporation called Sydex, into the equation. Mueller worked with the program during the 2003 season with the Cincinnati Reds, one of eight teams currently employing the program.

"The advanced scouting side, I really like. Just to spend an entire day breaking down a hitter, then getting to hear what [pitching coach] Mike Maddux thinks or Butch [Wynegar, the hitting coach] thinks and seeing if I'm on the same page," Mueller said. "We try to provide them with all this information. I just basically supplement what they might already know."

"I can filter for everything: for a runner at first base, all the stuff with two outs. It's ridiculous," Crawford said of the program, which can immediately offer video footage of any desired pitch or pitches and also provide hitting and pitching charts for any scenario. "It's location, pitch type, anything and everything."

Crawford collects video footage from five separate angles, four from cameras he can control himself during the game. He also travels with the team and brings a traveling unit, which he said most players have grown more familiar with than its Miller Park counterpart.

"Hitters definitely use it more," Crawford said. "Let's say a guy just made an out. He can run right in, load his name and he can watch it immediately. You can pause and you can see it from a different angle. They get immediate feedback."

"Whether you hit a home run or you strike out, you're in there trying to figure out what went wrong and what was different from the last time," said Brewers second baseman Bill Hall, who uses the equipment frequently. "I just try to minimize slumps that way by seeing what's wrong in there. If you're not feeling good up there, it's definitely an advantage to be able to go in there and look to see what went wrong."

And needless to say, the new system represents vast improvements from outdated alternatives.

"In the past, it was VHS tapes and using your eyeballs," said Maddux, someone Crawford identified as an avid user of the system. "When you do that, you just scout your games and you see 30 at-bats. With this, you can cover 150-200 at-bats and you might see a guy when he's blazing hot and you might see a guy when he's ice cold.

"That's what this thing allows, it takes hot streaks and cold streaks out of the equation and gives you a level feel for how it actually is."

The 24-year-old Mueller and his crew of four interns handle the majority of advance scouting, examining videotapes of recently played games by upcoming opponents.

"I just basically go through our video system and do a write-up of our next opponent's strengths, weaknesses in their hitters, any tendencies that I've seen," Mueller said. "I make a note for Mike Maddux of stuff to take a look at or Butch in regard to the pitch sequences or stuff like that."

"There is so much information available, and a big part of this job is just to filter that information and take what's out there and present it to the coaches," said Ash. "Coaches don't have time to sit there and go through all that stuff. There's a lot of information that's readily available, you just have to mine it."

As for the miners, the new technology allows Mueller to get a head start on front office aspirations and Crawford to serve as a pseudo-26th man.

"I've talked to other teams about being a pitching coach in the minor leagues, but here, I'll be with the big league club. I get to learn from the coaches and talk to the pro scouts and learn from them," Crawford said. "I couldn't be happier."

JR Radcliffe is a contributor to MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.

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