Using GameChanger for Machine Pitch Little League Games
Over the summer of last year I wanted to give GameChanger a shot for scorekeeping, but the lack of specific support for Machine Pitch or Coach Pitch formats kept me from trying it. When Spring Little League started last season, I decided to give it a try while scorekeeping along side someone using the paper scorebook.
With several workarounds I was able to make it work for our team.
A few background points on our Little League AA division rules:
- Machine Pitch with 3 strikes or 5 pitches
- 5 runs per inning in innings 1–3
- 10 defensive players
- 10 run mercy rule after 4 innings
- 6 inning games
- Almost all players rotate every inning — All players shall play a minimum of one inning in the infield position (P, 1B, 2B, 3B, SS) and one inning in the outfield or at catcher within the first four innings. No player may play more than two innings at the same defensive position (the four outfield positions are considered four separate positions for this rule).
How I made GC work for our team
Setting up our Roster — The GC app displays Last Names. I had setup our roster using the web app prior to our game, but quickly realized that the mobile app displays Last Names. For our first game I didn’t know all of the kids’ last names, so I had to quickly edit the names to only use their First name or First name + Last Initial (put in the first name field).
Setting up opposing team roster — If you can get the roster prior to the game, it’s easier to type it in from the web app with a full keyboard. But if you have a few minutes it’s not bad to type it in from the iPad. One advantage of creating it in the batting order is you don’t have to drag the names around to set the batting order.
Setting the defensive positions — Our coaches used a league standard Excel sheet to play the lineups that had the defensive positions for each inning in a consistent format. This made it a little easier to just work around the GC fielding positions (1B, 2B, SS, 3B, P, C, LF, LC, RC, RF) tapping positions and selecting names. It would be great to be able to setup each inning at the beginning of the game though.
I only cared about having named players in defensive positions for our team. When the opposing team was on defense, I left the positions in GameChanger unassigned.
6 Inning Games — From Menu — Settings change the Innings/Game value to 6.
5 Pitches — This applies to Machine Pitch or Coach Pitch if they have a Pitch limit. I recorded any non swing as a ball. After 3 balls, I recorded as Called Strikes. If a batter reached 5 pitches and it wasn’t a swinging 3rd strike, I recorded it as an Out:Other along with it note of “5 Pitches”. Surprisingly, this only happened a handful of times all season.
One aspect of tracking the 5 pitches is when there are more than 2 fouls. I recorded the pitch as Foul but there wasn’t a way to easily tell the pitch count. I just kept the count in my head. You can also just let the Umpire worry about it.
5 Run limits — The play doesn’t end on 5 runs, so I recorded all runs and throws to complete the play. If more than 5 runs had scored, I used the Game Override to edit the score to reflect only 5 runs scored in that inning. This is done in Menu — Game Overrides. The half inning then needs to be ended from Menu — End Half Inning. manually end inning and manual override — manual adjust score if more than limit was scored and then end the inning.
Recording defensive plays — I tried using the Advanced Fielding options to record the plays. I didn’t record plays as Errors — it’s Little League so there are a fair number of over throws, wild throws, odd plays. I attempted to record the initial throw. If runners advanced on over throws, I moved the runners around and selected On Last Play.
Some other situations I encountered that I had to figure out:
Kids arriving late — From the roster listings, select Add From Bench or Create New Players and add them to the bottom of the lineup.
Kids leaving early — either just leaving the game or being injured. From the roster settings, Select the player, and select Sub Out of Lineup.
Overall, I’m happy using GameChanger and don’t think I can go back to using a paper scorebook. Our coaches were hooked on the data after Game 1. It helped them tune the batting order and to experiment with different orders and positions. During games, the Spray Charts were incredibly useful to assist the coaches with adjusting player positions and giving the kids heads up to expect balls their way. It certainly added some competitive advantage to our team.
There are a few features needed to make GC easier to use for the Machine Pitch / Coach Pitch formats, but once a team starts using it they will be hooked.