What you need to know about GameChanger’s Team Manager baseball app.
For those unfamiliar with scoring baseball on GameChanger’s Team Manager app, it really isn’t that hard. But there are a few places where you can mess the whole thing up. Read on so you’re good to go from the first pitch.
The Difference Between New Team Manager App and Original GameChanger
The Team Manager app is pretty similar to the original GameChanger when it comes to scoring a game. So GameChanger’s “cheat sheet” found here is still applicable.
Like with the original app, you don’t need to an expert on all the arcane notations associated with the traditional paper scoring method.
When the coach of my son’s 11U travel team asked me to take on the role of scoring our games, I was really nervous, knowing scoring can get pretty complex.
However, GameChanger has thankfully made scoring easier than playing Candy Crush. Also, when my son’s 11U travel team, I was lucky enough to have another dad there to help. He had never used the new app, but was familiar with the old one, and they’re similar enough that he was a great asset.
How to Set Lineups in Team Manager
For a tutorial on how to set your lineup in the app, watch this:
Make Sure that Your Phone has Enough Battery Life to Get You Through Scoring the Whole Game
When I got to the field, my iPhone 11 was about 90 percent charged. In the bottom of fourth, I got the alert that my phone had only 20 percent battery left. The pitcher struggled in that half inning and walked a bunch of batters. I started sweating it out in the fifth, with my battery life in the single digits, and low power mode activated.
Thank god the game got called early, with my phone running on fumes. If it had been a doubleheader or a tournament, I would have been totally cooked.
So if you’re going to score a game on the Team Manager app, be sure to bring a portable battery charger like this one to head off any issues.
Remember to Add a Name or Number to the Opposing Pitcher
There’s a tendency to not bother adding the names or numbers of the opposing kids to their defensive positions in the app. However, the Team Manager app only counts pitches for a pitcher who has a name or number. So if you don’t input anything, you’re not going to know the count.
And it’s something you’re going to want to know, as most leagues set a limit on the the number of pitches any kid can throw. If a kid is lights out, the other team often wants to keep their kid in beyond the maximum pitch count.
If you’re going to call them out on that, you better know the exact pitch count. So remember to input the kids name or number before he throws his first pitch.
How to Score a Play in Team Manager
For a clip on how to score a play in the app, watch this:
It’s So Easy to Get Distracted During a Youth Baseball Game, But You Can’t When Scorekeeping on the App
I’m the kind of person who’s easily distracted. During a youth baseball game, I chat sometimes with the other parents and miss a few plays on the field. If the umpire makes a bad call and it goes against our team, I get caught up in the parental outrage and lose focus from the following plays. If my kid is not positioned correctly in the field and the coaches aren’t telling him to move, I call out to him to move this way or that way. I also often check my email or text during a game.
My point is that you really can’t do any of those things when scorekeeping on the Team Manager app. You need to follow each pitch like a yoga devotee counts each breath. It’s a totally different way of watching a game.
If you lose focus and miss a few plays, and then try to catch up while more plays are going on, you’ll wind up frantically tapping away on the app and messing it up.
But on the positive side, scorekeeping is making me more zen.
It’s Not Always Easy to Find Your Pitcher’s Pitch Count When Your Team is Batting
“What’s his count?” my son’s coach kept calling out to me between innings referring to our pitcher.
Unfortunately, the Team Manager App doesn’t readily display this information when your team is at bat. I had to be shown that the way to find our pitcher’s count was to go to our lineup, then click on statistics, and go to that player. What I wound up doing, though, was noting our pitcher’s count before I closed out our inning in the field. That way I’d already know the information when the coach yelled out to me.
How to Decide on Standard for Judging Errors
This is a big deal. The coach looks to the stats from the Team Manager app when assessing how players are performing. As a dad, I look to the same stats when evaluating my kid’s day at the plate. So the difference between a dad driving home from the field happy or dejected often rests in hands of the guy tapping values into the scoring app.
As I was scoring my son’s game, whenever we got on base due to questionable fielding, nervous dads would turn to me, knowing I was scoring the game, and say: “Hit?”
When my son was in 8U and 9U, it was easy. We called everything a hit. But we’ve all recognized there should be errors now.
I was calling it as I saw it. When the right fielder dropped a ball that landed right in his glove, I punched in error. When the second baseman booted a hard ground ball, but one right to him, and our number 9 hitter reached, I wanted to give him a hit, but it was an error.
Yet, when we were in the field, I panicked when our star shortstop, who had been having an amazing day, making plays no one else would have made, was a little slow on a ground ball and the runner beat it out. It didn’t seem fair to give him an error. And frankly I also didn’t want to alienate his father. But my calling it a single would then probably infuriate the pitcher’s dad, because a runner scored on the play, and it would affect his ERA.
I wound up calling it a single. Seven runners scored after that, all earned (when they shouldn’t have been). I had saddled the pitcher with a ridiculously high ERA that he would probably never dig himself out of.
I learned my lesson. Before the next game, I asked the coach what standard he wanted me to use for errors and just applied that standard.
Text a PDF Box Score to Your Team After the Game
A cool feature of the Team Manager app is that it allows you to save the box score of your game as a pdf. If your team has a group chat, you can post it right to that after the game. And if you’re having a hard time sharing the pdf, you can always just take a picture of the box score and text it to the team.
Do you have any tips for Using GameChanger’s Team Manager Scoring App? Let us know in the comments!
For information about the emotional side of baseball, see:
- How to Manage Your Kid’s Baseball Tantrums and Meltdowns
- Anger Management and Youth Baseball: How to Calm Down
- 4 Ways to Respond to a Coach Playing Favorites
- How to Stop Being a Crazy Baseball Dad
- How to Be a Good Baseball Dad in the Backyard
- Is It Now Fashionable to Hate On Baseball Dads?
- Are Local Little Leagues Bad for Baseball?
For information on hitting, see:
- How to Get Out of a Hitting Slump
- 4 Best Baseball Batting Aids (No. 3 is Free)
- 4 Hitting Drills You Need to Do Before Every Game
- 4 Old School Baseball Drills You Need to Be Using
For information on pitching, see:
- What You Need to Know About Little League Elbow
- 4 Ways To Increase Your Kid’s Pitching Velocity
- Is the Circle Change Dangerous for Youth Pitchers?
- Why I Don’t Let My Son Pitch in Little League
- Pitching and Head Injuries: What You Need to Know
- How to Make Sure Your Kid Isn’t Overpitched in Baseball
For baseball gift ideas, see Father’s Day Baseball Gifts This Baseball Dad Would Love.
my issue has been fixing mistakes and moving players in lineup after changes mid game. Had some situations where I could not fix the line up and opposing team was off one batter but it was the only way to keep the scoring the game. Wish there was way to change batters quickly while scoring instead of removing and adding everyone again.
There’s the option to go back like you would in Word document. But I’ve also been in situations where too much has taken place in the game and I’d lose too much by going back. So I’ll usually just add or remove batter when come up in lineup.