Scoring rules

[Scorekeeper]

Scorekeeper-the threads you are looking for come up from time to time. This one http://www.discussfastpitch.com/softball-fielding/16538-errors.html popped up yesterday. It was posted in the fielding forum, not rules, so adding another forum wouldn't have gotten it there anyway.

Perhaps if there was a forum, that thread would have been posted in it rather than in a forum on fielding. I know I’d have never seen it because I wouldn’t be looking in forums I feel I have little to contribute in a forum like that.

But, I will sneak a peek now that I know its there, just to see how its handled. Thanx for the link.

 

[Eric F]

People mistakenly post in the incorrect forums frequently. This stuff happens no matter how clear you label forums. It's that human factor again.

 

[BadMonkeys]

Perhaps if there was a forum, that thread would have been posted in it rather than in a forum on fielding. I know I’d have never seen it because I wouldn’t be looking in forums I feel I have little to contribute in a forum like that.

But, I will sneak a peek now that I know its there, just to see how its handled. Thanx for the link.

Your'e welcome. I don't disagree with your thoughts on the organization of the forums. After all, they are your thoughts. You enjoy scorekeeping and stats. You must find certain patterns of organization to your liking. Only natural. I have learned to adapt to the forums. I will use the "what's new" button along with the Google custom search bar at the top of the page and look for the things I am interested in rather than trusting a thread is posted in the correct forum. I have also found that you can't always get a clear idea of the topic of a thread by the subject line. Sometimes you just have to click on it.

 

[Scorekeeper]

People mistakenly post in the incorrect forums frequently. This stuff happens no matter how clear you label forums. It's that human factor again.

Sure that’s going to happen, but its still not a good reason for cramming everything into on place. Its not as though I’m asking for something that’s groundbreaking. As I said, there are already 29 sub-forums, so will one more destroy the web site?

 

[CJ D]

Just out of curiosity....by chance.....you're not related to SCdad are you?

 

[BadMonkeys]

Anybody ever stumble across a fastpitch scorekeeping casebook so to speak?

 

[Scorekeeper]

This might be interesting to you.

Amateur Softball Association of America (ASA)

 

[Scorekeeper]

… Sometimes you just have to click on it.

Yeah, that’s always the best way, but I post regularly in 5 different baseball forums, along with a couple other forums that hold other interests for me, so I don’t have a lot of time to search for things that might interest me. It might be different for me if I was a SB devotee, but its more of a scoring and stat thing for me, so a lot of the run-of-the-mill things that would interest me if they were about BB, don’t have the same attraction when they’re about SB. Its not that I think SB is in the same class as Kommie Kickball, but rather that I know so little about it, and at this point in my life don’t have the desire to learn. But statistics don’t change whether they’re about SB or BB. They may have different meaning, but they still show the same things.

 

[SoCal_Dad]

One of the main problems is that no rule set, BB or SB, other than the Official Baseball Rules(OBR) has taken the time to make it clear what’s expected from scorers when judging whether something should be scored an error as opposed to something else. That depends on how “ordinary effort” is defined, and from what I can see in both SB and BB NCAA rules, its not defined at all.

Here’s the definition from OBR Rule 2.00.

ORDINARY EFFORT is the effort that a fielder of average skill at a position in that league or classification of leagues should exhibit on a play, with due consideration given to the condition of the field and weather conditions.

Rule 2.00 (Ordinary Effort) Comment: This standard, called for several times in the Official Scoring Rules (e.g., Rules 10.05(a)(3), 10.05(a)(4), 10.05(a)(6), 10.05(b)(3) (Base Hits); 10.08(b) (Sacrifices); 10.12(a)(1) Comment, 10.12(d)(2) (Errors); and 10.13(a), 10.13(b) (Wild Pitches and Passed Balls)) and in the Official Baseball Rules (e.g., Rule 2.00 (Infield Fly)), is an objective standard in regard to any particular fielder. In other words, even if a fielder makes his best effort, if that effort falls short of what an average fielder at that position in that league would have made in a situation, the official scorer should charge that fielder with an error.

Without that definition, literally every scorer can have a different standard, and that causes problems.

It does seem odd that ordinary effort is not defined in other rule books. However, in a later post you admit that this definition does not guarantee a uniform standard because scorekeepers have different levels of experience to deem whether an average fielder would have made the play. OBR intends it to be an objective standard, but there is no getting around the fact it is applied subjectively.

One thing in the softball scoring guides favor is they do contain a few specific criteria when scoring hits and errors of what in essence constitutes ordinary effort.

 

[Scorekeeper]

It does seem odd that ordinary effort is not defined in other rule books. However, in a later post you admit that this definition does not guarantee a uniform standard because scorekeepers have different levels of experience to deem whether an average fielder would have made the play. OBR intends it to be an objective standard, but there is no getting around the fact it is applied subjectively.

I can guarantee that nothing in the OBR was, is, or will ever be intended to be totally objective, as long as human beings are making the interpretations and the calls. They understand that humans make errors for many different reasons, and that there’s no way to objectively come up with a definition of average for every different position. That’s exactly why they’ve given in to replay.

What they’ve tried to do is make any calls as consistent as possible, and the most difficult of the calls for scorers is whether or not something should be scored an error, and the most difficult part of that is whether or not ordinary effort was made.

One thing in the softball scoring guides favor is they do contain a few specific criteria when scoring hits and errors of what in essence constitutes ordinary effort.

I’ve skimmed the NCAA rules and seen they’ve tried to pick out specific things. Personally, I see the same thing wrong with those rules that I see in all the different sets of baseball rules. In trying to make the rules more clear and easier to use, they actually make them more complicated.

Some years back I ranted and railed about how OBR should be more like NCAA rules, in that there were clearer explanations within the rulebook so someone didn’t need a casebook and to go to umpire’s school just to be able to understand the intent of the rules. Slowly but surely, OBR has added more and more comments to the book that help the person who isn’t gonna try to earn a living scoring or umpiring, and its really helped a lot. The trouble is, the other sets of rules like NFHS and NCAA have seldom tried to update their rules to incorporate the changes OBR made, and that includes SB rules.

The end result is, amateur umpires and scorers have to either spend a great deal of unnecessary time keeping up with differences in the rule sets, make mistakes that come from confusing between rule sets, or do what I do. Do my best with the rule set I’m scoring under, but fall back to OBR whenever I have a question.

In short, there only needs to be one basic set of rules, with anyone who doesn’t want to play under those rules completely, putting in modifications for their games. Unfortunately, every organization that publishes their own rules won’t give up that kingdom. Each one wants to be the Big Kahoona, but all they do is make things much more complicated than necessary.