Scorekeep/Stats Software?

ballstat - seemless transition between their ball stat and ball score program - www.ballstat.com - best thing is that it's only $20.00 with lifetime updates. I've been using it for high school programs for the last 6 years.

Thank you! I will check it out tonight.

Lefty

You should also check out www.gamechanger.io
Free to use and available for others to follow games, live or history, for a small subscription fee online.

I have put together a website (TossItAround.com) that will allow you to keep stats, schedule, and much more (it's under Scoreboard). I would actually love to have anyone give it a run through. There is no cost involved and it is a pretty nice system which also along with the website could be great for teams, players, coach's, parents, and fans. I am constantly updating things so if you have other ideas please let me know. Sign up on the site and then either sign up for Scoreboard and let me know you would like your team added or email me at roger.kalinowski@tossitaround.com.

We use an ipad and Iscore ($10). Its a little tricky to use at first but the stats you get from it is amazing. You get hit sprays, individual hitting, pitching, sprays, fielding all organized and easy to read. I love this thing.

Just a reminder it did take a little while to get used to but after 3 games we have it all figured out. So practice before you start.

You can also stream it to the web for parents who can not be at the game. But that is an extra $20 and you need wifi.

I concur with Redsoxfan21 - the GAME CHANGER software is really outstanding and the version I downloaded from the Apple Store was FREE!!.

It has the push technology so you score the game on your Ipod Touch... After the game, connect your Touch via WIFI to the internet and the game will automatically be pushed to the GAME CHANGER website where stats are compiled.

The free verison is SUPER......

iScore. It stared as an iPhone app, but now works on iPad and a Droid phone. Very precise recording of game action with lots of stats generated in multiple formats. Also creates a very nice scorecard.

Go to ...
http://iscore.fasterthanmonkeys.com/

iScore! Does take a bit to get used to the flow of the application. However, once you get the hang of it, there is nothing better. Currently $10 on app store, runs on both iTouch/iPhone/iPad, can share between devices and does stream to internet which is FREE not $20. Its called iscorecast and doesn't cost. What is extra is team or player websites which are also awesome.

Highly recommended. Great community as well, just like this community here. Good answers to many of the same questions asked here around scoring games.

Used game changer today for first time. So intuitive and easy to learn. Auto streams to websites via a Scoreboard widget or to twitter or facebook or excel. Free updates. Also has spray charts, extensive stats, etc. This is wha you want!

Thought I would follow up on my previous postings regarding advanced scorekeeping / stats software.

I stand by my original opinion: You just can't beat gamechanger.io for ease of use, instant streaming of pitch by pitch activity to folks who can't be there, spray charts, more stats than you can think you might need, scheduling resources..... the list goes on and on.

I originally tried a competitor listed on this post stream and found it far less intuitive and very challenging. Let's face it; when we are at a game we may be arriving just before game time, facing a team we have never seen before, or our home team line-up changing on the fly. Gamechanger makes all of these challenges a non-issue.

Changing and building lineups is as easy as selecting existing players or adding them as they come to bat. Moving positions around to reflect a shifting defense without a substitution is equally as easy.

Probably one of the coolest features is the instant game summary the software conjures up. You would swear you had written it yourself, except it usually comes out better and more professionally than you would have written it.

And the best thing? It is free to try, and free to score, and free to share box scores and summaries. And for a small one season fee others can get streaming internet feeds on a pitch by pitch basis, as well as stats. And they can also get text message updates. For those of you with privacy concerns, you can even control which stats, if any, you want to share.

THIS IS THE SOFTWARE YOU WANT TO USE IN YOUR NEXT SEASON!

I wish we could aford some type of hand held device but ....... I mentioned a long time ago that BallStat is a great program. It will provide more info than you know what to do with. I typically use a book then transfer the info to the program but I have done a couple of "live games" on my laptop which was great just had to watch my battery life.

It will allow you to track pitch types, locations, spray charts then blow you mind with both standard and customized reports. I know the handhelds are perfect when you are at the game - very quick and now many are much easier to use than in the past but if you're on a tight budget and want free lifetime updates (plus a forum to talk to other users, Ball Stat is perfect.

quote:

Originally posted by jfsbndr:…
It will allow you to track pitch types, locations, spray charts then blow you mind with both standard and customized reports….

Can you or anyone else explain exactly what you use spray charts for?

Spray charts are basically a picture showing the direction and relative distance of all hits, and marking them as hits and outs on a baseball diamond.

quote:

Originally posted by RedSoxFan21:
Spray charts are basically a picture showing the direction and relative distance of all hits, and marking them as hits and outs on a baseball diamond.

I know what they are. I’ve been making them for years. My question was how were they being used. I’m asking because so many people are wowed by them. While I admit they’re interesting to look at, I believe their use is very limited in the HS environment, and of no use at all during games.

Well spray charts can help a coach set his defense. I know that our coaches, after an at bat or two, like to know where the ball went for each batter (most of the time they already know).

Their value is twofold:

First, if you can combine them with pitch location and type, they are a good indicator of where the hitter has a tendency to hit the ball. Great if you will see that team again or just want to know more about your pitcher - like if he throws a certain pitch in a particular location where is the ball likely to end up.


• Second with this information you are able to introduce more strategy into the game. As a Coach you use them to help position your defense or yo can even use them as an aide in deciding what pitch and where you want you pitcher to locate a pitch.
  
  
• You may have seen stats on MLB games showing a batters tendencies for hitting a ball to left, right or center field. These are captured through the use of spray charts.

Very valuable tool - even at lower levels. Their use can also help coaches when woking with their own players. Like if Sam always seems to hit to the left side of the field - why? Can his mechanics be tewaked? Is he using the right weight bat? I thknk you are getting the concept.

quote:

Originally posted by jfsbndr:
Well spray charts can help a coach set his defense. I know that our coaches, after an at bat or two, like to know where the ball went for each batter (most of the time they already know).

After a bat or two? Normally I’m the guy who says sample size has nothing to do with the validity of the data, but that’s not something like this. What you seem to be saying is, if the #1 batter in the lineup hits the ball to right field and the #2 batter also hits the ball to right field, the entire defense should shade every batter to right field, and that just doesn’t make sense to me.

quote:

Their value is twofold:

First, if you can combine them with pitch location and type, they are a good indicator of where the hitter has a tendency to hit the ball. Great if you will see that team again or just want to know more about your pitcher - like if he throws a certain pitch in a particular location where is the ball likely to end up.

Just today I had a player tell me the same thing, and I’ll say the same thing here I said to him. Like you, I mentioned their dependence on the location and type of pitch. But I also mentioned that the same pitcher can throw the same pitch at several different qualities, and the lower the level, the more variance. Along the same line of thinking, if two different pitchers are used, the difference will vary wildly.

In HS, the chances of seeing that same batter again in another game that same season are small enough, but having him bat against the same pitcher is even smaller still. But even more than that, the chances that the same batter against the same pitcher will hit the same pitch in the same location to the same spot, is so miniscule as to be negligible.

Now if there were a common database like the MLB has where all pitches the batter sees are entered, that’s a different story, but since its unlikely an individual batter will face a team more than 15-20 times in his HS career, counting on a spray chart would very likely be less dependable than playing every batter to be late on a pitcher who throws hard, and to pull if the pitcher is a soft thrower.

quote:

Second with this information you are able to introduce more strategy into the game. As a Coach you use them to help position your defense or yo can even use them as an aide in deciding what pitch and where you want you pitcher to locate a pitch.

Are you saying that once you set a defense for the pitch types and locations that will be called, you’re locked into those types and locations? Sure seems to me that it would take a heck of a lot of flexibility away.

quote:

You may have seen stats on MLB games showing a batters tendencies for hitting a ball to left, right or center field. These are captured through the use of spray charts.

True, but those are the results of sometimes thousands of at bats against tens of thousands of pitches, and hundreds of pitchers in infinite situations.

quote:

Very valuable tool - even at lower levels. Their use can also help coaches when woking with their own players. Like if Sam always seems to hit to the left side of the field - why? Can his mechanics be tewaked? Is he using the right weight bat? I thknk you are getting the concept.

[/QUOTE]

Now working with one’s own players in practice is something else again. I wholeheartedly support that concept. But trying to use them in a game and on-the-fly is something I can’t buy into until we’re talking the pro level. But even when working with one’s own players, IMO you have to really be careful because without accurate pitch types and locations, you have just as much chance of screwing up a kid as helping him.

You asked what spray charts were used for and two people tried to provide an answer. To both of them you have thrown their answers in their faces. Sounds like you already know all there is to know on the topic.

For others, I find that the batters themselves find the spray charts helpful for them to easily see what their own tendencies are and what they need to work on. As the season grows so does the spraychart for that season and the information it offers.

The Gamechanger.io software is perfect for that.

quote:

Originally posted by RedSoxFan21:
You asked what spray charts were used for and two people tried to provide an answer. To both of them you have thrown their answers in their faces. Sounds like you already know all there is to know on the topic.

For others, I find that the batters themselves find the spray charts helpful for them to easily see what their own tendencies are and what they need to work on. As the season grows so does the spraychart for that season and the information it offers.

The Gamechanger.io software is perfect for that.

You take it as throwing their answers back in their faces, but to me all it is, is point out that what people THINK is often not at all what IS. I’m not saying spray charts are no good at all, I’m saying that their application depends entirely on other things than just the chart. I’ve done spray charts for a lot of years, and do them now, but their use is very limited, mostly because at any level below the pros, a coach doesn’t have someone in the dugout with a computer, handing him figures that a staff of data miners is getting for him.

I said I wholeheartedly support the idea of using then for one’s own players, but you gave me no credit for that at all, but rather dismissed everything I had to say because you ASSUMED all I was doing was taking potshots at people and trying to come off as an authority. However, as to how much a SC shows anyone “what they need to work on”, that’s a matter of discussion.

As for GameChanger, I know one of the parties they’re partnered with pretty well, and got to test it when it was still in in the Alpha mode. Since then, its become a very nice product for 90% of all users, and I’ve recommended it hundreds of times. But it doesn’t work for me because I want more depth in my stats. It doesn’t make GameChanger a bad product by any means, but it doesn’t work for everyone.

The only reason I even asked the question was because here lately, I’ve seen a lot of folks go all weak in the knees over one of the various stats programs, and they seem to always make sure to mention spraycharts, and how useful they are in games for various reasons. They are useful, but their use is limited, and its one of the few places in the game where I believe a coach’s perception about what’s going on in deploying his fielders, is just as good and in most case better than a spray chart.

Now if you don’t like that explanation and want to continue to see me as some kind of whatever, I can’t stop that, but it doesn’t make it true.

quote:

You may have seen stats on MLB games showing a batters tendencies for hitting a ball to left, right or center field. These are captured through the use of spray charts.[/LIST]

True, but those are the results of sometimes thousands of at bats against tens of thousands of pitches, and hundreds of pitchers in infinite situations.

Thousands of at bats? Have you ever watched a game on TV? I only recall seeing data on spray charts that are based un the current season. I suppose that the guy who only gets 100 at-bats has no tendencies.

quote:

Originally posted by RedSoxFan21:
Spray charts are basically a picture showing the direction and relative distance of all hits, and marking them as hits and outs on a baseball diamond.

RedSoxFan21 - don't you just wish you never responded to some of these.

Take care

Now why is it that this has digressed into you calling me dude and insulting me? Can’t we disagree without calling each other names?

As a matter of fact, I have heard many coaches ask that very question, and I learned a long time ago how silly it was to even consider it. You talk as though every batter faces the same pitcher throwing the same pitches in the same places with the same quality and in the same situations, and that ain’t how it works. Try to calculate the chances of any specific hitter, hitting a ball to the same field.

The chances of it happening are much greater when the batter’s swings are consistent, and when the pitchers can actually locate the ball fairly well, and when they throw pitches with consistent quality. I believed the rhetoric, until I actually tracked how often hitters repeat where they hit a ball from at bat to at bat. Trust me, it’s a myth that it happens a lot.

Now perhaps you’ll find out something different, and if you do, I’d love to look at the data.

quote:

Originally posted by Stats4Gnats:
Now why is it that this has digressed into you calling me dude and insulting me? Can’t we disagree without calling each other names?

As a matter of fact, I have heard many coaches ask that very question, and I learned a long time ago how silly it was to even consider it. You talk as though every batter faces the same pitcher throwing the same pitches in the same places with the same quality and in the same situations, and that ain’t how it works. Try to calculate the chances of any specific hitter, hitting a ball to the same field.

The chances of it happening are much greater when the batter’s swings are consistent, and when the pitchers can actually locate the ball fairly well, and when they throw pitches with consistent quality. I believed the rhetoric, until I actually tracked how often hitters repeat where they hit a ball from at bat to at bat. Trust me, it’s a myth that it happens a lot.

Now perhaps you’ll find out something different, and if you do, I’d love to look at the data.

Didn't know dude was calling you a name. Sorry about that buddy.

You're right - there is no reasonable use for spray charts without tons of supporting data. Those of us who find them helpful are most definetly following the myth you refer to.

God forbid I use them any longer. Thanks for setting me straight. Have a good one. Before you leave - give this link a try. You might just appreciate the overal concept. Fun With Spray Charts

quote:

Originally posted by jfsbndr:
…You're right - there is no reasonable use for spray charts without tons of supporting data. Those of us who find them helpful are most definetly following the myth you refer to….

You’re so angry AT me, you’re consumed with cynicism and entirely missing the point. I never said you shouldn’t use them or that that they weren’t helpful. I’m simply challenging you to look at what’s really happening, and evaluating if they’re helping you as much as you think. What harm can there be in checking the facts?

quote:

Originally posted by Stats4Gnats:

Can you or anyone else explain exactly what you use spray charts for?

Sorry. bad day. I was just trying to answer your question. I did not know you were looking for supporting data based on your original question.
What I was trying to get across is that spray charts are helpful perdictors.

When I started keepin a book YEARS ago I would have coaches ask where an opposing hitter "went
last time at bat. Normally the question was asked if the pitcher was the same as the batters previous at bat. They simply wanted to know so they could correct any obvious issues in the position of their outfielders.

Then in high school, our teams play each other in conference 3 times in a season and most times you will see an opponets top pitcher in at least 2 of those games.

By scouting the other team on pitch location, pitch type and spray, you could take advantage of spray charts as predictors. Note it is entirely fair to say many coaches already have a good idea of positioning and where a pitcher pitches and where a batter will hit the ball when batting against that pitcher.

But many times, if you're finding the information right more often than wrong, you will use it as a PART of your strategy on defense.

Offensively it's great to review during practices. It can point out tendencies like a hitter that rarely goes the opposit way. Coaches can use this to better look at the mechanics of a hitter.

Currently I own a sporting goods store. Whenever I have a young player come in to buy a bat, I evaluate his swing with his current bat and bats that are heavier and ones that are lighter. I also ask the player and parents if the player has a tendency to go to the left or right side. A right handed batter with too light of a bat, usually pulls and one with a bat that is too heavy usually goes to the opposite field. Asking these questions is my way of trying to create a mental spray chart that I can use to help a young hitter. Too many parents just buy what is either cheap or what is eally cool but rarely the right weight. Obviously this can cause a player to have a bat that is too light or to heavy.

As you go further in play level, spray charts can help determine how a coach might have his pitchers pitch or even if they think putting their runners in motion (hit and run) might be beneficial.

I guess the point is the data does not always have to reflect your team's performance or the pitchers performance against your team. It's a good tool for scouting purposes and does play a role in game strategy (how much or how little will alway differ from one organization to another). It's simply a predicition tool and in baseball, everyone wants to have as much info as they can have in order to get that "edge". Whether it's spray charts, pitching charts, pitch counts.....

Sorry I took my bad day out on you.

quote:

Originally posted by jfsbndr:
Sorry. bad day. I was just trying to answer your question. I did not know you were looking for supporting data based on your original question.

Not a problem. I very seldom consider any of this back and forthing personal. I assume we’re all here to enlighten ourselves or help someone else.

quote:

What I was trying to get across is that spray charts are helpful perdictors.

I agree with one minor change. They certainly “CAN” be, but not necessarily “ARE”. Other than that, we’re on the same page.

quote:

When I started keepin a book YEARS ago I would have coaches ask where an opposing hitter "went last time at bat. Normally the question was asked if the pitcher was the same as the batters previous at bat. They simply wanted to know so they could correct any obvious issues in the position of their outfielders.

Now here’s where I get myself in trouble because to many its gonna seem as though I’m attacking you or calling you a liar, but all I’m doing is asking to evaluate what was going on, and making a couple observations about it, so don’t get defensive, please.

I’ve been asked the same question myself, but seldom by the coach, but that’s because I refuse to keep score in the dugout, and if I’m the official book, its pretty rare that I’ll communicate those kinds of things to either coach. That may seem nuts to some, but that’s just me. But on the question itself, I never really gave it a lot of thought because I don’t care why a coach wants information. I just assume he needs it because it has some useful purpose.

As I got a bit more involved with generating metrics though, there were a lot of things taking place that statistically just didn’t make sense to me, so it wasn’t unusual for me to check to see what was really happening, and this was one of those things. I could find general tendencies over time, like a player would pull the ball or hit it to the opposite field, but I never could find much of a relation from one AB to the next for batters. I could for pitchers, but not batters.

The more deeply I checked, the more obvious it was that even with the same pitcher on the bump, so many other things could change, going by the last at bat seemed really fruitless to me, or at least no more fruitful than just assuming the ball would be hit to the opposite field more often than not if the pitcher threw really hard, or the pitches were on the outside part of the plate.

quote:

Then in high school, our teams play each other in conference 3 times in a season and most times you will see an opponets top pitcher in at least 2 of those games.

Let me stick this in knowing its completely off topic, but I’m mentioning it because you did, and it’s a very salient point.

My son played 4 years of HS ball, and they had schedules made up that matched what you described. But when the team I score for now came into being, a new league had to be formed, and they changed the standard a bit. From 2007 thru 2010, all of our conference games against 1 team were played in the same week, i.e. Home on Mon, away on Wed, Home on Fri. Luckily, we only got rained out of 2 conference games in those 4 years, but managed to get them both in during that week so the pitching rules remained in force.

What a great 4 years those were! Coaches couldn’t throw that same guy at a team twice because pitchers here can only throw 30 outs per week. So although he could throw in 2 games, it wasn’t going to be 2 whole game in any way. A side benefit was, coached were FORCED to develop that 3rd starter, and the result was the league turned out a heck of a lot more good pitchers.

But then a couple coaches who couldn’t get that 3rd starter on line decided to change things, figuring they’d have a better chance to win, and during a league realignment got enough votes to change it to the old way of scheduling. Last year was a horrible disaster for everyone, and thankfully this year it was unanimous to go back to the 3 conference games in the same week schedule.

Sorry, couldn’t help it.

quote:

By scouting the other team on pitch location, pitch type and spray, you could take advantage of spray charts as predictors. Note it is entirely fair to say many coaches already have a good idea of positioning and where a pitcher pitches and where a batter will hit the ball when batting against that pitcher.

In situations like that, I’ll agree that they can be much more beneficial, but how often does that happen in a 30-40 game season? And a lot depends on the relative quality of the two teams. If you’ve got a good team with good pitching and a good defense, it can pay off.

quote:

But many times, if you're finding the information right more often than wrong, you will use it as a PART of your strategy on defense.

I agree again. But I question how that’s being measured, not whether or not it happens or to what degree.

quote:

Offensively it's great to review during practices. It can point out tendencies like a hitter that rarely goes the opposit way. Coaches can use this to better look at the mechanics of a hitter.

I can’t/won’t even argue that. I have my doubts about it, but can’t say whether it’s a worthwhile endeavor or not. It sounds good in theory, but when put in practice thing have a way of changing.

quote:

Currently I own a sporting goods store. Whenever I have a young player come in to buy a bat, I evaluate his swing with his current bat and bats that are heavier and ones that are lighter. I also ask the player and parents if the player has a tendency to go to the left or right side. A right handed batter with too light of a bat, usually pulls and one with a bat that is too heavy usually goes to the opposite field. Asking these questions is my way of trying to create a mental spray chart that I can use to help a young hitter. Too many parents just buy what is either cheap or what is eally cool but rarely the right weight. Obviously this can cause a player to have a bat that is too light or to heavy.

Well done! Its too bad more folks who sell bats don’t do the same thing.

quote:

As you go further in play level, spray charts can help determine how a coach might have his pitchers pitch or even if they think putting their runners in motion (hit and run) might be beneficial.

I guess the point is the data does not always have to reflect your team's performance or the pitchers performance against your team. It's a good tool for scouting purposes and does play a role in game strategy (how much or how little will alway differ from one organization to another). It's simply a predicition tool and in baseball, everyone wants to have as much info as they can have in order to get that "edge". Whether it's spray charts, pitching charts, pitch counts.....

Again, I totally agree. But this is something very different from flat statement. I guess I just like a bit more info than most, so I can better evaluate what’s being said.

Being one of those guys who contribute mightily to the overflow of data running around, I’m generally pretty careful about how I describe some metric. That’s because I’ve learned over the years, that even the best metrics are pretty useless if the person looking at them doesn’t have the time or the capacity to analyze them properly, and its my experience that a HS coach doesn’t have a whole lot of that kind of time.

Its pretty unusual for a HS program to have a statistician and analysts who do little else other than to mess with the numbers, the way ML teams do. I think its too bad too, because I believe there’s a tremendous amount that could be learned and be very helpful in decision making. But when you’ve got a HC and 3 volunteer coaches who can usually only make it to games, its tough to get a lot out of the numbers other than the standard old stuff.

quote:

Sorry I took my bad day out on you.

No reason to be sorry, unless you did it maliciously, and I never got that impression. People with passions, often express them passionately. I don’t think that a bad thing, as long as its done honestly.

Now that I’ve gotten a better idea about how, when, and where, they’re useful, I’ll let you in on part of the reason I asked the question in the 1st place. I’ve always done spray charts after every game by hand. Please see http://www.infosports.com/scor...images/scatter11.pdf for an example of our 2011 spray charts for both pitching and hitting.

Like the rest of the metrics I do, I’ve been doing that by hand for almost 15 years now, and to be honest, it takes a tremendous amount of time. And because of the state of technology, its always been kinda awkward to print off those things, then keep them on the clipboard for use during a game. Well, as we all know, times have changed.

I’ve gotten a lot older and am less and less inclined to spend the data input time I used to, but I’m unwilling to give up my numbers! The only way to do that was 1) to go to some off-the-shelf program like gamechanger, or 2) convert my program to not only keep score and generate metrics, but to generate MY metrics, and to be able to interface with the data I have from years past. I chose 2.

As it sits, its pretty darn good and does about 95% of what I want it to do, but that last 5% is a B**** to make work well, and the spray charts are one of those things. I can still do them manually because I have locations for every ball that’s put into play, but that will only allow me to have “after-the-fact” spray charts.

I was trying to find out how useful it would be to have realtime spraycharts, so I could make a decision about whether to spend a lot of programming time making it happen. The answer to that questions is, it isn’t very important, and therefore has slipped waaaay down on the list of things I have to do to get this thing in tip top shape by February.

If and when I take care of all the other things I judge to be more important issues, I revisit this one, but the truth is, I just don’t see the bang for the buck I see from other metrics. I may be wrong because its strictly a value judgment on my part, but I only have so many hours in a day to work on this stuff.

Thanx for taking the time to give a more detailed explanation. Its appreciated.