AP expands Minor League Baseball coverage

AP expands Minor League Baseball coverage

The Associated Press has expanded its coverage of Minor League Baseball, through automated stories, for games not previously covered by the news organization.

AP is working with technology from Automated Insights and data from MLBAM, the official statistician of Minor League Baseball, to make the expanded coverage possible.

Automated game stories are now available for all Triple-A, Double-A and Class A games, covering 142 MLB-affiliated teams and 13 leagues.

The stories also will appear on MiLB.com, the official website of Minor League Baseball, and the official sites of the teams being covered.

APs baseball editors and reporters worked closely with Automated Insights to configure the Wordsmith platform to conform to the news judgment and standards for APs baseball coverage. AP routinely covered some Minor League games through the 2006 season but for not nearly as many teams and leagues.

Weve been exploring how to use automation to enrich the AP Sports report, said Barry Bedlan, APs deputy director of sports products. MLBAM data is among the best and a perfect fit for this, while being able to generate more content of local interest.

Automated Insights developed the technology AP already uses to generate more than 3,500 earnings stories about U.S. public companies each quarter.

With Automated Insights, AP started publishing these automated reports in July 2014 by using data from Zacks Investment Research.

The Associated Press proved the value of automated journalism with earnings stories, and their expansion into Minor League Baseball shows the demand for expanded news coverage from media outlets across the country, said Automated Insights CEO Robbie Allen. Were pleased that Wordsmith continues to be a fundamental part of the APs news operation, enabling the organization to cover types of news that simply couldnt be done without automation.

The AP Sports report first used automation technology several years ago and now provides most of its sports agate to subscribers through automation.

The AP, which hired an automation editor last year, continues to actively explore additional automation technology solutions with Automated Insights.

Here's a recap of a Wednesday game in the New York-Penn League:

STATE COLLEGE, Pa. (AP) -- Dylan Tice was hit by a pitch with the bases loaded with one out in the 11th inning, giving the State College Spikes a 9-8 victory over the Brooklyn Cyclones on Wednesday.

Danny Hudzina scored the game-winning run after he reached base on a sacrifice hit, advanced to second on a sacrifice bunt and then went to third on an out.

Gene Cone scored on a double play in the first inning to give the Cyclones a 1-0 lead. The Spikes came back to take a 5-1 lead in the first inning when they put up five runs, including a two-run home run by Tice.

Brooklyn regained the lead 8-7 after it scored four runs in the seventh inning on a grand slam by Brandon Brosher.

State College tied the game 8-8 in the seventh when Ryan McCarvel hit an RBI single, driving in Tommy Edman.

Reliever Bob Wheatley (1-0) picked up the win after he struck out two and walked one while allowing one hit over two scoreless innings. Alejandro Castro (1-1) allowed one run and got one out in the New York-Penn League game.

Vincent Jackson doubled twice and singled, driving in two runs in the win.

State College took advantage of some erratic Brooklyn pitching, drawing a season-high nine walks in its victory.

Despite the loss, six players for Brooklyn picked up at least a pair of hits. Brosher homered and singled twice, driving home four runs and scoring a couple. The Cyclones also recorded a season-high 14 base hits.

This story was generated by Automated Insights (http://automatedinsights.com) using data from and in cooperation with MLB Advanced Media and Minor League Baseball, http://www.milb.com.

About AP

The Associated Press is the essential global news network, delivering fast, unbiased news from every corner of the world to all media platforms and formats. Founded in 1846, AP today is the most trusted source of independent news and information. On any given day, more than half the worlds population sees news from AP. On the Web: www.ap.org.

About Automated Insights

Automated Insights is the creator of Wordsmith, the artificial intelligence platform that generates human-sounding narratives around data. Wordsmith makes it easy to generate millions of personalized stories, reports, and articles in the time it takes to write one. The Wordsmith platform helps companies in data-driven industries, including financial services, e-commerce, real estate, business intelligence, media and many others, achieve scale, efficiency and personalization. More than 200 customers, including Allstate, The Associated Press, Edmunds.com, Orlando Magic and Yahoo!, use Wordsmith to generate more than 1.5 billion pieces of content per year. Learn more at http://AutomatedInsights.com.

LINK:	http://www.ap.org/Content/Press-Release/2016/AP-expands-Minor-League-B...
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