Scoring Disasters: The Flaws of Letting Unknowing Parents Keep Book

[quincy]

I am not a stats person for sports either as a parent or manager. Still have 2 comments.

We had a player keep score at this age, they can be more bias then a parent.

If you haven't yet watch all stars movie. The stats guy is fun.

 

[Long Baller]

Can't the coaches go in after the game and change things, thought it used to be that way. Maybe that's what is happening.

Yeah, the coach's kid's stats always look better a week later than what they were during the tournament.

 

[Orange Socks]

Back in TB days, coach's wife used iScore while a parent did GC. The parent that did GC was somewhat removed from the coach while the wife was close by if coach had questions. Mom did a good job and she actually played D1 softball back in the day. Mom did it so parents could and family could follow along that didn't travel with the team. In those years, not one parent ever commented about stats. Questions about stats usually happened during HS season.

 

[The Man In Blue]

And you want me to trust the count ...

 

[quincy]

We hope you can count to 4.

 

[Shelia B]

Thanks for all the advice and thanks for helping show me how these things could happen. I guess I never quite realized just how difficult game changer could be to use. I’m definitely going to volunteer to help after reading these replies.

 

[Traps71]

Garbage in=Garbage out.

Once you score a few games, GameChanger is really not that difficult and, in fact, fairly intuitive to use. Certainly happens that you get the opponent’s batting line up minutes before the game, but, truthfully, theirs matters the least. Your own line up and fielding positions should be known and set beforehand.

Worst case, you just manually add the opponent’s line up batter by batter as they come up to hit. Annoying, but not that hard once you get the hang of it. The only thing to worry about otherwise is the opponent’s pitcher and catcher. If I don’t have time, I don’t worry about who is playing in the field for the opponent.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I generally find there are, on average, two or three plays a game that are real judgment calls (hit vs. error). One person’s mistake is another person’s sound judgement. I think if you have knowledge of the scoring rules and are trying your best to score plays accurately, then any “mistakes” you make over the course of a season are going to balance out. No way a team’s .400 hitter is going to be a .200 hitter on GC if the scorekeeper has any sense at all.

As others have said, the coaches should be combining what they observe in games and practices with good data to help make their decisions about the lineup and defensive positioning.

 

[Traps71]

Link to NCAA softball scoring rules:

https://static.soconsports.com/custompages/socon/members_only/rules/2013-14/softball_stats_manual.pdf

 

[whiporee]

Garbage in=Garbage out.

Once you score a few games, GameChanger is really not that difficult and, in fact, fairly intuitive to use. Certainly happens that you get the opponent’s batting line up minutes before the game, but, truthfully, theirs matters the least. Your own line up and fielding positions should be known and set beforehand.

Worst case, you just manually add the opponent’s line up batter by batter as they come up to hit. Annoying, but not that hard once you get the hang of it. The only thing to worry about otherwise is the opponent’s pitcher and catcher. If I don’t have time, I don’t worry about who is playing in the field for the opponent.

As I’ve said elsewhere, I generally find there are, on average, two or three plays a game that are real judgment calls (hit vs. error). One person’s mistake is another person’s sound judgement. I think if you have knowledge of the scoring rules and are trying your best to score plays accurately, then any “mistakes” you make over the course of a season are going to balance out. No way a team’s .400 hitter is going to be a .200 hitter on GC if the scorekeeper has any sense at all.

As others have said, the coaches should be combining what they observe in games and practices with good data to help make their decisions about the lineup and defensive positioning.

As someone who's done GC for five years, I have to disagree. There are times it's easy and intuitive. Simple hit to the SS, throw to 1st, no problem. But others it's not. For example, you have a ball hit softly to 3rd, who makes a tag for the FC, then throws to first but overthrows it just enough for 1st miss it, and then, as the runner who was on second heads for third, overthrows it back, where 3 then grabs it, tries to go home for the tag, the catcher misses the catch, the runner scores, the player who was batting is now on third and oh yeah, the next batter is up as you're trying to correctly attribute the play because parents -- like the OP -- get pissed off if you're messing up their DD's stats for the game. Does the error go to the high throw or the makable, but hard catch? How about the skipped throw or the ball that came out of the catcher's mitt? It shouldn't matter, but it does, and trying to get it right can be hard

Or even something as simple as not getting the lineup because the book still has it, and you're sitting on the third base line but the first batter is a lefty so you're trying to run over to at least see the number because they don't have them on the front of the jersey, and she gets a hit on the first pitch. It's usually easy -- but there are plenty of times it's not and if you're doing your best to keep things accurate, stuff can get missed no matter how hard you try.

One more thing -- a team's .400 hitter might only be a proposed .400 hitter. I don't know of any scorekeeper who would take away a hit, but if the ball goes to 2nd and 2nd doesn't field it cleanly and the throw is late, it's an error. If a ball's hit decently hard and it goes through or right past the SS, that's usually an error. if a bunt's not fielded correctly, that's an error. We've got a leadoff who's blazingly fast -- the defense has to be clean to get her out. But if they are clean, they do. She shouldn't get credit for a hit if they don't. Those are the rules of the game. If OP's DD is a good 16u team., chances are they play a lot of bad 16U teams, teams that can't routinely make easy plays. I admit I'm often hard on our defense, but I don't know of scorers who are hard on their own team's offense. So it just might be that hitter hits a lot of balls to short that aren't fielded, so she get son base a lot of the time,. But coaches might see that and think she's often lucky, so they move her down. That kind of stuff can happen, and is more likely than a scorekeeper screwing up to the level it would take for those stats to hold true.

 

[Shelia B]

As someone who's done GC for five years, I have to disagree. There are times it's easy and intuitive. Simple hit to the SS, throw to 1st, no problem. But others it's not. For example, you have a ball hit softly to 3rd, who makes a tag for the FC, then throws to first but overthrows it just enough for 1st miss it, and then, as the runner who was on second heads for third, overthrows it back, where 3 then grabs it, tries to go home for the tag, the catcher misses the catch, the runner scores, the player who was batting is now on third and oh yeah, the next batter is up as you're trying to correctly attribute the play because parents -- like the OP -- get pissed off if you're messing up their DD's stats for the game. Does the error go to the high throw or the makable, but hard catch? How about the skipped throw or the ball that came out of the catcher's mitt? It shouldn't matter, but it does, and trying to get it right can be hard

Or even something as simple as not getting the lineup because the book still has it, and you're sitting on the third base line but the first batter is a lefty so you're trying to run over to at least see the number because they don't have them on the front of the jersey, and she gets a hit on the first pitch. It's usually easy -- but there are plenty of times it's not and if you're doing your best to keep things accurate, stuff can get missed no matter how hard you try.

One more thing -- a team's .400 hitter might only be a proposed .400 hitter. I don't know of any scorekeeper who would take away a hit, but if the ball goes to 2nd and 2nd doesn't field it cleanly and the throw is late, it's an error. If a ball's hit decently hard and it goes through or right past the SS, that's usually an error. if a bunt's not fielded correctly, that's an error. We've got a leadoff who's blazingly fast -- the defense has to be clean to get her out. But if they are clean, they do. She shouldn't get credit for a hit if they don't. Those are the rules of the game. If OP's DD is a good 16u team., chances are they play a lot of bad 16U teams, teams that can't routinely make easy plays. I admit I'm often hard on our defense, but I don't know of scorers who are hard on their own team's offense. So it just might be that hitter hits a lot of balls to short that aren't fielded, so she get son base a lot of the time,. But coaches might see that and think she's often lucky, so they move her down. That kind of stuff can happen, and is more likely than a scorekeeper screwing up to the level it would take for those stats to hold true.

I wouldn’t of posted this thread if the mistakes weren’t as bad as they are. I understand when a scorekeeper rules a hit as an error if an error was involved. Our scorekeeper has credited multiple real hits as errors.

For example once a girl hit a line drive into the outfield, the ball landed on the grass a good distance ahead of the fielder and then hopped right under the left fielders glove. The hitter made it to first and once they saw the error the LF made she advanced to 2nd. I would’ve scored this as a single and then an advancement on an error but our scorekeeper scored the whole hit as an error.

Like I said before the scorekeeper is a very nice parent and their daughter is also a very kind girl and one of DD’s best friends on the team (i feel it’s worth mentioning that their daughter gets cheated out of real hits just as much as the rest of the players) but the parent is not good at paying attention and Is
often browsing their other phone or texting.

Also one of the biggest mistakes they’ve made is crediting 90% of our players bunts as fielder’s choices. One of our blazing fast players laid down a perfect bunt right down the 3rd baseline and easily beat out the throw to first (no error was made and the fielder didn’t even try to get the base runner who was running from 1st to 2nd) and when we checked the gamechanger the bunt was scored as a fielders choice??? One of the parents who was watching the game changer kindly explained that the bunt should’ve been counted as a single and I will give the scorekeeper credit cause they did change it to a single... and then the scorekeeper made the exact same mistake the very next game.