NEW YORK—As baseball fans focus their attention on the Major League Baseball playoffs, the players are intensely focused on seeing a small, leather-covered sphere hurtling at them at speeds of 90 to 100 mph. Helping players hone that rare vision skill, which Mark Tosh discussed in Saturday’s edition of VMail Weekend, is a goal of two optical companies, Smart Vision Labs and RightEye.

During the 2016 baseball spring training season, ophthalmologist Dr. Daniel Laby tested over 600 MLB players using Smart Vision Labs’ handheld wavefront autorefractor, that the SVOne autorefraction system can successfully measure the small, yet significant, refractive errors in the sample of players that were tested. In general, almost all of these athletes are clinically proven to have little to no error in refraction, which differentiates them from the general population and consequently leads to their profound ability at hitting a baseball.

RightEye has been selected to provide baseline performance vision screenings to all athletes entering Prospect Development Pipeline, a newly created channel for amateur baseball players to gain exposure with Major League Baseball clubs. As part of the agreement, RightEye will work with the MLB Scouting Bureau and USA Baseball to assess the performance vision of participants at the invitation-only Prospect Development Pipeline events. Players will also receive direct feedback on their performance and dynamic vision assessments to further develop these attributes.

Using technologies like these, both today’s Major Leaguers and tomorrow’s aspiring pros will be able to up their game.