Angel Coaches Learning to Play Hardball With Software : Technology: With new computer program, they search for answers on opponents’ statistical tendencies.

It’s considered the cutting-edge of baseball scouting, but for Angel pitcher Jim Abbott, the stacks of computer printouts look like, well, just another pitching chart.

“By the time the information filters down to us, it all looks the same,” he said. “It’s all low and away or high and inside.”

Abbott and other baseball purists joke about their sport linking up with the computer age. They’re not believers, at least not yet.

But the Angel coaches appreciate the computer software they began using this season to analyze opposing hitters’ tendencies.

The Angels invested $6,500 in a statistics program developed by Pen-It of Walnut Creek, Calif. The program saves coaches dozens of hours of work and has helped them analyze statistics in ways they never could by hand.

“We have as many as six different options,” said Joe Maddon, the Angels’ first base coach and computer guru.

“We can get a ‘spray chart’ [similar to a shot chart in basketball], what the count was when someone hit the ball, stats on right-handers vs. left-handers and indications of where in the strike zone the ball is.”

As the Angels dropped to second place in the American League West, Maddon and the Angel staff plugged opponents’ statistics into the software in hopes of finding some answers. Can they position their infielders differently? Should they pitch a certain hitter differently?

Five major league teams--the Angels, Dodgers, Braves, Mets and Cubs--are using the scouting software, said Bill Kehaly, president of Pen-It.

“We have found that doing the stats by hand and transferring them to other stat books just wasn’t a good way to do it,” said Gary Sutherland, a Dodger scout. “The computer program is a better way to get the information more accurately.”

Although the Angels have found the new software advantageous, Kehaly cautions that it has not revolutionized the sport. Still, it saves time, and, more importantly, money.

“In the past, teams have had to pay thousands of dollars to get the statistics from companies like Stats, Inc.,” Kehaly said. “The data has always been there, but the cost was tremendous, and it cost even more if a team was headed to the playoffs.

“With the Angels getting ready for the playoffs, they won’t have to spend the extra money to get those stats. They can generate them on their own.”

They can generate hitting statistics by each pitcher, team or league. They can generate a pitcher’s statistics by each batter.

They can evaluate opposing hitters by game, series or in the past 99 at-bats. They can calculate a hitter’s two-out runs batted in or how many called third strikes he takes.

“The Cubs are even using it to position their infield against certain hitters,” Kehaly said. “Take a look at Barry Bonds. The spray chart of the outfield shows that he hits to every field. But when you break it down to the infield, you see he’s a dead-pull hitter.”

First baseman J.T. Snow said he and other Angel hitters use the system to check how they are doing against opposing pitchers.

“It can tell you by pitch what a guy’s average is, what percentage of time a pitcher will throw it in a zone and total pitches in a zone,” Kehaly said. “The batter tendency report shows you all kinds of things, 0-0 pitches, two-strike pitches.

“Look at Brett Butler. On a 0-0 pitch, he will take a pitch unless he decides to bunt. The Dodgers can take that information and adjust, and he can swing at some of those pitches.”

Maddon uses the software on a laptop computer and runs copies of the analysis on a portable printer.

Angel coaches still chart the games by hand, then enter the statistics into files to process the information. The program analyzes the figures by pitcher, pitch location, left-handed and right-handed hitters, etc., in a matter of seconds.

“This is stuff we never could have done before,” Maddon said. “Each of the tasks would have taken a half-hour to 45 minutes a night to do.”

Sutherland agreed.

“I can’t imagine doing all the paperwork by hand,” he said. “Now, the only time you waste is waiting for the printer to print out.”

For years, coaches and scouts charted pitchers and hitters in large, bulky statistic books. Kehaly jokes that some scouts have “built on additions from homes because they collected so many books over the years.

“When a player changed teams, the coaches had to go out to the garage, find the book and stick the player’s page in the new book,” he said. “Now, they can just change his team on the software and move it in seconds.”

Kehaly began developing the computer scouting in 1991, when he was building software programs for several home-service companies in Northern California. He was watching a baseball game on TV and noticed a coach charting pitches.

“I thought, ‘It would be easy to develop a program for him,’ ” he said. “The next day, the Angels hired Whitey Herzog [as director of player personnel]. I read in the paper that Whitey said no matter what the cost, he would bring a championship to the Cowboy [Gene Autry].

“I knew they would be the perfect team to call.”

Kehaly flew south and made his sales pitch. Thanks, but no thanks, said the Angels. Seems there were a few computer-phobics in the front office at the time.

But General Manager Bill Bavasi was one of the believers. After the meeting, Bavasi, then the team’s director of minor-league operations, pulled Kehaly aside and told him, “Keep working on it.”

“Billy was a free thinker and saw the advantages of it,” Kehaly said. “He thought baseball was computer-challenged, and it would take five years to adopt the idea, if I stuck with it.”

Turns out, Bavasi was right. Kehaly kept working on the system, and slowly, major league baseball started to notice.

“Five years later,” Kehaly said, “I got my first check.”

The checks keep coming, too.

The Mets have purchased Pen-It’s new $15,000 system, which allows as many as four scouts to enter data in the program. Kehaly expects college teams will look into it as well.

“A lot of other teams are starting to look at this,” said Sutherland, the Dodger scout. “I’ve had a lot of scouts come up to me on the road and ask me what it can do.”

Kehaly has a vested interest in the playoffs this fall. He’s already planning a trip to Anaheim in early October for the AL playoffs.

“You could say we’re pulling for a Dodger-Angel World Series up here,” he said.