merging teams

[gary456]

What is this best way to handle a new season for usssa baseball. In previous years played a certain team and will be playing said team again this year. I use the discover function on iscore and import the new team. Should i then merge the new team into the old team? Or merge the old team into the new team? Some players have changed due to whatever reason but the base team is the same with maybe 2 or 3 different players.

[FTMSupport]

If you are going to merge the teams instead of keeping them separate it is probably better to merge the old team into the new team. Otherwise next time you Discover from USSSA, the team will come in with a new internal ID again and you will have 2 separate teams again.

[GARY1364]

Yes I do not think I would need to keep 2 seperate teams. If I do keep 2 seperate teams what about the player stats from the original team to the new same team with some new additions of players and others that are gone from that team? That sounds confusing. Would the player stats carry to the new separate team or would I need to merge those players. Would it duplicate players I guess if I import the new team.

[FTMSupport]

Players stats will be kept across teams when you go to Player Manager, select a player, and view stats from the player. If you want to see consolidated stats from Team Manager, you would have to merge the teams however.

[OhioTex]

I would advocate two separate teams!

I have done both ways but find I really prefer having last year team around. It just seems more natural to me too. I just add a year to end of name Eg Braves -2015. My current year team will be braves until a year from now and then they will get added braces -2016.
( not a space/storage issue by he way, minimal)

I do this even when only changing a couple players - year to year. Teams just have different feel to me year to year.

I also use leagues heavily within a season to group pre season, regular season, post season, league and tourney stats. If you have only one team you will also very much need to use leagues to filter last year vs this year team stats . Also if you use 1 team you will want to put players on not advice part of roster in team manager vs remove if you want the last year stats to be available

hiatorically most users Crete their own next year team roster on their device but if you need to discover your team from ussa. You will need to map players during the discover or mere players (from old to new). This takes a few minutes but to
Me the better way to go

[gary456]

That is a good way to look at it. I use leagues heavily for stat separation.etc. as far as mapping players do you just compare new team to old and copy the old player to the new player if there are 2 names in the player slots? It appears now when I discover and import a team it already sees those players and previous stats

[OhioTex]

This is a bit tricky to describe.. (but a common problem) so Let me try.. It helps to concpetually understand, Under the covers iscore creates a unique identifier for ever player..(and team) to keep things straight. You do not see this identier . A serial number so to speak but it is there.

For a number of reasons, . you can have two players in your player manager list with the same "human readable name" example John smith. But under the covers iscore has them as two seperate unigue serial numbers. You have to tell the program, if that is ok, That two people with same name (john smith is common) or same person double entered. Oops. (perhaps manually created player for last year 2015 team , and then imported by usssa discover for this year 2016 team). If both john smiths are in real life only one person.. You use the "player merge feature"in iscore to correct (merge button in player manager screen). You tell iscore to combine the two

, the merge screen asks very specificity in which direction you merge the player so that the resulting player has the serial number you want to survive, because affter a merge the other serial number is lost forever.. You have no way to know the serial number, But having the right serial number survive matters to computer to keep straight when you "discover teams and players".. Because When you discover a team or player on import mapping the underlying serial number of player "syncs" , and is how iscore knows later that player (or team) is already on your device. So when you go to merge players, you need to first figure out for yourself which player you want to survive, (ie the one the discover thinks is the real john smith). that can be tricky. If you want the discovered player to survive, I go to the most team roster i discovered and edit player name to say John smith good.. I go to old team and edit player name to say John smith old.. Then I safely merge the two players john smith old into john smith good.

The old team and new team now have the same John smith Good on it. I next edit back tomnormalmplayer name, John smith, Sounds complicated, but once you "get the theory" key strokes pretty simple.

So now, when ALL leagues on, (aka no filter) in player manager, player stats will be lifetime/career stats. But when you look at his stats from a team, it will only be stats generated in games for that team ..say 2015 stats or 2016 team. And if you have leagues set up by year/team. you can also filter the player manager stats that way too. Which brings you full circle back to why you can go with one or two teams.. But I just prefer changing out teams every year.as they are in my mind "new teams" with some returning and some new players.


Side note: kinda amazing this inexpensive program and programmers took time to anticipate all this, so well. And they did

[gary456]

Ya that was tricky but i think i understand. So far this year I have imported 2 teams for the tourney we play this weekend which those teams were imported previously it recognized the returning players coming in and their previous stats. I think for now I will just keep the teams separate and assign to appropriate leagues that I use for this year. That maybe seems a little less messy then merging teams etc. I really haven't seen much of an issue with duplicate players for whatever reason i do not know.

[OhioTex]

Sounds like you are good to go.

As I said early in this thread, it is my strong preference to not merge teams. New year = new team. Also, use "leagues" liberally to create logic groupings for seasons, tourneys years etc.. Leagues are extremely powerful and helpful tool in iscore. .

Regardless, of 1 or 2 teams, if you want to maintain a players 'life time stats' across teams and yard.. be mindful to monitor the player lists And clean up any inadvertent duplicates of a player .