ROBOTS REPLICATE REALITY: HIGH-TECH PITCHING MACHINE MIMICS EVERY PITCHER

Nestor Cortes got behind the plate in a batting cage and watched an 8-foot-high, 1,200-pound robot spit out fastballs, cutters and sweepers just like the ones spinning off the fingertips of his left hand.

“It was like seeing myself pitch. That was crazy,” the New York Yankees All-Star left-hander said.

Technology has come a long way since the days of the Iron Mike.

The Trajekt Arc pitching machine uses baseball’s high-tech data to mimic the way balls break from every big league pitcher and has been approved by Major League Baseball for in-game use this year in batting cages. Using video of deliveries and data, the robot allows a hitter to step in against recreated offerings from any pitcher he wants to face. Dodgers two-way star Shohei Ohtani said he used Trajekt to view his pitches from a different vantage point.

“You’re training their brain. You’re training their eyes,” Philadelphia hitting coach Kevin Long said.

Each machine costs $15,000 to $20,000 a month as part of a three-year lease, an unimaginable leap forward from the pitching gun invented by Princeton mathematics professor Charles Howard Hinton in 1896 that looked like a 2 1/2-foot-long cannon.

Paul Giovagnoli turned the concept into a business. He owned golf driving ranges in Wichita and Topeka, Kansas, wanted to add baseball and created what become known as the Iron Mike. Giovagnoli founded Master Pitching Machine in 1952, and its units with long metal arms became omnipresent throughout the majors.

By the mid-1970s, machines with spinning wheels entered the market, the better to replicate breaking balls, and the Yankees had three at $1,600 each at spring training in 1978.

Those models have gone the way of flannel uniforms.

Spinball Sports’ iPitch Smart Machine retails for $14,000 and is programmed with 16 builtin pitchers with 140 pitches. Company sales manager Sam Root says there are more than 100 of its iPitch machines among 27 MLB teams and units are at 15 Division I college conferences.