Sabermetrics' impact grows as baseball delves deeper into the numbers

PHOENIX -- Here’s a fascinating statistic: When the Cardinals and Cubs played the opening game of the 2015 season, the first game that Statcast recorded the location and movements of every player on the field -- along with the spin rate, velocity and movement of every pitch, plus various components of the hitter and the ball in play -- 98 percent of the known data in the history of baseball had just been documented. In one game.

You’ve seen some of this information, such as exit velocity -- the maximum speed of a ball when struck. Why did Ryan Zimmerman hit .209 in the first half, spend 40 days on the DL, and then hit .311 after his return? His exit velocity was way down early on, the result…