GameChanger.

With my kids traveling all over the country playing various forms of softball and baseball, I can say I like it. I have sat through many a boring teleconference while watching one of my kids pitching real time on Gamechanger. Makes it much more interesting.

There were also a fair share of 'what the bleep???'. Mainly because the driver doesn't know what button to push and ends up playing catch up with some interesting choices.

One example was my son pitching with a runner at first. Fly ball to center field caught on good play and makes an attempt to throw out runner at first but throws ball into dugout to advance the original runner to third (that was what happened). It was scored F-8, E-8, balk (to account for the extra base). After the game I was asking son why he was balking with a runner at second and one out? He said, "Dad, I haven't balked in two years". Took a while to figure out what happened.

In softball, there was a slap hitter who hit a chopper that hit her out of the batter's box. We lost two full innings while the scorekeeper tried to figure that out. Ultimately scoring pop out to catcher and then catching up with all the missed action by scoring hits and K's for every baserunner and out. When comparing his work to my wife's book it was quite a miss-adventure.

I have watched games finish with a score of 10-5 on Gamechanger and my wife will text me with "won 11-3". She has a book, is a decent scorekeeper (well taught ) and with a gale force wind and driving rain, will come up with the correct score, so I trust her work.

Parents log in and quote stats off this by the way.

I haven't tried it, but would suggest its probably a good tool if you have a scorekeeper who knows what they're doing and 'dry runs' a few games to figure it out before going live.

Stat's, I'd be interested to what you think and if it gives you all the options an experienced scorekeeper requires.

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Originally posted by JMoff:
With my kids traveling all over the country playing various forms of softball and baseball, I can say I like it. I have sat through many a boring teleconference while watching one of my kids pitching real time on Gamechanger. Makes it much more interesting.

I have absolutely no qualms at all about “MOST” people finding it to be a very good product. I only know that it doesn’t meet my specific needs, but I’m trying to find out why.

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There were also a fair share of 'what the bleep???'. Mainly because the driver doesn't know what button to push and ends up playing catch up with some interesting choices.

Yeah, that’s a formidable obstacle to overcome. I know a way to do it programmatically, but I won’t bother just for myself. I just keep a notepad and a pencil close at hand, and mark down what’s taking place for the few minutes it takes me to correct any problem.

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One example was my son pitching with a runner at first. Fly ball to center field caught on good play and makes an attempt to throw out runner at first but throws ball into dugout to advance the original runner to third (that was what happened). It was scored F-8, E-8, balk (to account for the extra base). After the game I was asking son why he was balking with a runner at second and one out? He said, "Dad, I haven't balked in two years". Took a while to figure out what happened.

I totally get it. I’ve been faced with several of those myself, and have had to come up with literally a different programmatic solution to each. One thing that’s helped me is, my program for the automatic movement of runners is a bit more sophisticated and flexible. But trust me, this stuff ain’t easy by a long shot.

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In softball, there was a slap hitter who hit a chopper that hit her out of the batter's box. We lost two full innings while the scorekeeper tried to figure that out. Ultimately scoring pop out to catcher and then catching up with all the missed action by scoring hits and K's for every baserunner and out. When comparing his work to my wife's book it was quite a miss-adventure.

One of the problems with GC and IScore is apparently that they didn’t do as much “testing” as they COULD have. When I 1st generated my program, it took me about 3 months to get it from ground zero to scoring games. That was the easy part though. Because I was also a scorer and a programmer, I made a great many “allowances” for things I knew would be coming along that weren’t in the original plan. Trouble was, those things were of a much higher volume than I anticipated, so I can imagine the “issues” they’d have if they didn’t have someone who had a strong scoring background.

That’s why I score games constantly, and even take advantage of MLB.com’s pitch-by-pitch availability of every game to score games even when there aren’t any being played. I find a bug about every other game, and one of those situational “glitches” about once every 10 games. Unfortunately for testing purposes, MLB doesn’t have re-entry and “speed up rules”, so I have to wait for a HS game to get a good testing game, and since there’s no database like MLB has to go back and get games pitch by pitch, the testing becomes a very long and drawn out process for just one guy like myself.

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I have watched games finish with a score of 10-5 on Gamechanger and my wife will text me with "won 11-3". She has a book, is a decent scorekeeper (well taught ) and with a gale force wind and driving rain, will come up with the correct score, so I trust her work.

What’s going to happen with this new way of scoring is, more and more people are going to find out just what you did, that unless the scorer is really paying attention and constantly checking on what’s been entered, there’s gonna be mistakes exposed that no one ever noticed before, but have been going on since the 1st scorer made the 1st mark on a piece of paper, or stone tablet if that’s the case.

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Parents log in and quote stats off this by the way.

I know they do, and that’s what concerns me just a tad.

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I haven't tried it, but would suggest its probably a good tool if you have a scorekeeper who knows what they're doing and 'dry runs' a few games to figure it out before going live.

As I said, the reason I’m even looking at it is to see what kind of Ideas I can “borrow”. To be honest, what little I’ve seen hasn’t shown me anything that my program doesn’t already do as “good” as or “better”, but that’s in relation to me, not 10 million different people of varying skills. But in answer to your observation, you’re correct. If someone really takes the time to practice and experiment before they go “live”, it is a pretty good tool.

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Stat's, I'd be interested to what you think and if it gives you all the options an experienced scorekeeper requires.

Well, I don’t know that anything gives “ALL” the options an experienced scorekeeper requires. After all, like anything else that has a wide variety of people doing it, there will be many ways to skin that cat.

One thing I noticed right away, and noticed in working on another baseball related project, was how when putting in the roster, “Handedness” is used. I’m gonna open myself up to some criticism here, but I have to be honest about how I see a lot of this “stat” stuff.

There was a time when I tracked “handedness”, just like the big boys do. But unlike the big boys, I never found that it had much impact on the players I scored for. Yeah its neat to know Johnny has a better OBP against LHPs than RHPs, but in the middle of a HS game, that doesn’t mean a great deal, and the lower the levels go, I’m sure it becomes less and less something anyone can do much about. College teams have a 35 man roster and Pro teams 25, where most HSs have 15-20, with probably at least 2 or 3 not really being even “average” players, and most lower level teams 12-15 players at most.

The more limited the number of players, the less “flexibility’ there is to consider relatively minor things like handedness. After all, where a ML manager might put in 4 different pitchers for 4 different batters, a HS or LLI coach doesn’t really have that luxury. And while I recognize that most coaches would overload the lineup with LHBs if they knew a RHP was starting, going much beyond that initial lineup is really asking a lot.

So, it didn’t take me very long to just drop handedness from MY metrics. I didn’t do it because it wasn’t a valid thing to be concerned about or a nice piece of information to have, but rather that there just wasn’t a lot anyone could do about it. Without it, its just one of many things I don’t have to worry about, although as with all such things, had a coach every indicated to me that it was something he wanted to see, I’d have been glad to accommodate him.

One thing I’d have done if I were GC, would have been to make the choices on things like “Ball”, “Fouled ball”, etc., a whole lot bigger. Judging by how many times it happened with the IPad, I can’t imagine how many times I’d have to hit the back or redo option if I was using a phone!

As to all the options, until I actually try to use it, I can’t say for sure, but it looks ok as much as I’ve seen. I was really surprised to see how close we were in the scoring options, but we differ a bit on how the approach to engage them. I’ll be able to tell more, the more I tinker around.

But in GENERAL, it sure looks like a great product. I didn’t know though, that there were different levels of “service”, and that there was a price involved. When I first heard about it from one of their partners, I was led to believe it was a totally free app, and the $$$ they’d make would come from some kind of advertising operation. Its not that I find their charges outrageous, but its not what I was led to believe.

There are a few threads out there that discuss GameChanger. I've used it for the past two years and loved it.

Do a search and you may find some helpful posts here on HSBBW.

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Originally posted by RedSoxFan21:
There are a few threads out there that discuss GameChanger. I've used it for the past two years and loved it.

Do a search and you may find some helpful posts here on HSBBW.

There’s no doubt GC is a great product, and one I’ve recommended many times, but I will never use it because it doesn’t fill my needs. Its not that what I use is “better”, its that what I use meets my exact needs because I wrote I to do that. I would have to give up way too many metrics I find valuable, over 9 years of history, and all the flexibility I have for mining the data.

That’s why searching old threads would only make me spend a lot of time I don’t have, trying to glean answers out of a lot of writing. For me its easier to ask specific questions. If I was ever going to be a ‘user”, that’s be something different, but I can’t even imagine having to give up literally hundreds of metrics I’ve already developed and the hundreds more I anticipate developing, not to mention the hundreds I’ve developed and discarded for one reason or another.

When you began using it, how long had you been a scorer, how long had you been the team statistician, and how long had you been scoring for the same team?

Well, I finally got some time to try to re-score a game I’ve already scored. It only took 2 batters before I ran into an “issue”. I looked for help in support, and I’m waiting for a reply from them, but if someone can give me an answer, I’d sure appreciate it.

1st batter. CBC HBP.

2nd batter. CC- Runner on 1st gets picked, starts for 2nd, but gets tagged out by F3. I need to mark a pick, SBA, CS, Asst for F1, PO for F3, and the 1st out before I can finish the AB for the 2nd batter.

Stats, if your current program works for you, not sure why you're looking at gamechanger.

Bottom line, it is a very good scoring program for most team needs up thru high school. Most of the common scorekeeping requirements are readily available. Some of the odd ones take some time to figure out. As for costs, the app is free. It allows you to invite other's to "watch" the game and get stats for a small fee.

As to your specific issue, if you tap on the runner on first it will give you the pick off option. As I recall, there is a small glitch if the PO is before the first pitch -- then you have to use caught stealing. Good luck.

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Originally posted by Golfman25:
Stats, if your current program works for you, not sure why you're looking at gamechanger.

Only a fool wouldn’t want to look to see if he can find improvements to what he does. That’s the main reason I’m looking at it. Another reason is, when someone discusses scoring programs, I don’t like being totally ignorant about what they’re doing.

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Bottom line, it is a very good scoring program for most team needs up thru high school. Most of the common scorekeeping requirements are readily available. Some of the odd ones take some time to figure out. As for costs, the app is free. It allows you to invite other's to "watch" the game and get stats for a small fee.

I know that, and its why I’ve been a strong supporter of it. In fact, when I 1st heard about it from one of their partners, it hadn’t yet been released. But from what I was given to read, it looked like a terrific product, and I started telling people to look for it and try it when it came out.

Unfortunately, like I told them when I was asked, the major downfall of it is that if one doesn’t know the scoring rules, it doesn’t do anything but make it easier to read the scoresheet.

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As to your specific issue, if you tap on the runner on first it will give you the pick off option. As I recall, there is a small glitch if the PO is before the first pitch -- then you have to use caught stealing. Good luck.

When I tap on the runner, I get a menu that says: Pinch Runner, Special Pinch Runner, Courtesy Runner. Now if I press the runner and move it slightly then let it go, I get a menu that says: Picked Off, Offensive Interference, Out on Appeal, Other.

That’s ok if the runner was picked at that base. But let’s say there’s a runner on 1st and the pitcher throws over and the runner is caught off base. At that time, it’s a pick for the pitcher and a pick against the runner. But if that runner makes any move what-so-ever to 2nd, now it becomes an SBA too. If he makes it to 2nd, its an SB, but in any case its an SBA. The GC support explained how to deal with the SBA/SB, and you explained how to deal with the pick, but so far I don’t have a way to put all the components together.

Its not that it’s a big deal because it happens so infrequently, but it does happen. I found it happen enough that I felt it was necessary to come up with something to handle it, which I did. I give a menu too, with these options.

R1 CS at 2nd by Catcher
R1 goes to 2nd
R1 goes to 2nd on balk
R1 goes to 2nd on E
R1 goes to 2nd on FC
R1 goes to 2nd on PB
R1 goes to 2nd on WP
R1 POCS
R1 POSB
R1 POX
R1 Steals 2nd

We’re doing the same thing, but just approaching it differently. Part of the reason for many of the difference between the way they’re doing it and the way I do it is because of the different scoring techniques we’re using.

They’re using the old fashioned way, which is certainly OK, and one I worked with up until last season. But now I use what they use in MLB/MiLB, and that’s using the “Before Play”, “Play”, and “After Play” method that can be seen in Project Scoresheet. See http://alexreisner.com/basebal...cumentation.v1.0.pdf or
http://dcortesi.home.mindspring.com/scoring/

Now do most people need or even want the added accuracy and flexibility you get using the new way? Of course not! Its just that a lot more information can be gleaned from the book, but most people, up to and including college ball don’t want or need that additional info. Its not that it wouldn’t be nice to have, but there only so much time coaches at those level have to do stat analysis, unlike pro ball.

I also have the advantage of “tuning” what I use for my specific needs, not the possible needs of millions of people in many deferent venues. That makes a huge difference too. There are some things in my program that could be a lot better, but I’m so used to its “personality”, I don’t even notice their deficiencies anymore, so its not worth the time to spruce them up.

But the bottom line is, there’s a lot of different butts that need a lot of different seats, and this butt is always looking for ways to make his seat more comfortable.