Apple and Major League Baseball have signed a multi-year deal that will see every team receive iPad Pro tablets for use in the dugout, reports The Wall Street Journal. The 12.9-inch tablets will be used with rugged, MLB-branded cases based on the one from STM pictured below, and a custom app called MLB Dugout will help managers see performance statistics, check videos from earlier games, and analyze how pitchers and hitters are likely to perform against each other.

The deal is reminiscent of the one Microsoft struck with the NFL to have Surface tablets on the sideline of each game, with one difference — iPad use is optional for MLB teams, whereas Surfaces are mandatory in the NFL. MLB teams will get their own personalized data preloaded onto the tablets before each game. Laptops, smartphones, and tablets have long been banned in MLB dugouts, but that ban is being lifted alongside the Apple agreement.

"We're not just replacing binders with tablets"

"I started in this game 25 years ago and the single biggest change has been the emergence and predominance of analytics," MLB commissioner Rob Manfred tells the WSJ. "It affects the way we judge players, make decisions on the field and the way fans consume the game." Apple's marketing SVP Phil Schiller says "We're not just replacing binders with tablets, we're actually helping them do things that weren't possible before."

Financial details of the deal haven't been made available.