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It's not 100% clear to me when and how-often MLB Rosters update. Is it once a day, or as roster changes are reported, or what? Also, do you guys update the lineups once they're announced? I'd like to know so I can figure out how much I need to manage the MLB Rosters versus just letting you guys take care of it.

Also, when I update the MLB Rosters, do the stats added due to games I scored get overwritten with official stats?

We do an update on our database every morning about 8am PST. You can do an update any time after that.

The actual Lineup can be checked at any time before game time by using the "Sync" button for the team when going to score a game (sync button is in upper left corner). That will grab the latest "published" lineup which is often not official until 30-60 minutes before gametime. That is updated right when you press sync.

There is a single "summarized stats" when looking at a player card that is the official stats for the player. In addition to that, you will see stats for any games you have scored, but the two are not combined. You can also use the "Flip" button in the bottom left corner of the Player Card to go to a link to MLB.com and see even more details about individual players.

Great, thanks.

What is the recommended way of handling things when roster changes are made after the 8am update, especially when the player added does not already exist (e.g., a call-up from the minors or someone coming off of the DL for the first time this season)?

A question about the "Sync" option to update the lineup before the game... I wasn't at the game or able to even watch the entire game, but I wanted to try 2.0, so around the 5th inning of the Brewers/Reds game, I created a new game in iScore. When I pressed the Sync button, it displayed last night's lineup. I tried it again a couple minutes ago (now in the 8th) and it appears to have updated to tonight's lineup. Where does this information come from if you are only updating once a day? (I'm assuming it must come directly from MLB). Not a big deal tonight, as I was just messing around with it, but I thought I would ask if you've seen delays in your testing.

thanks,
ben

The Sync is actually still pulling last night's lineup for the Reds...

@joeyhyuk - We may make the updates occur twice a day to try and account for this situation. The 8am PST update time was an attempt to make it early enough to catch updates before East coast games start, but late enough we catch as much as possible. We may adjust it to do an afternoon update as well if mid-day roster changes become an issue.

@bsweetser - The sync option actually tries to grab the real time information right when you click sync. We have a service we pull the lineup info from, and when you click sync, it pulls the latest info. Our testing showed that the data was usually up to date for teams up to 30 minutes before the game... sometimes sooner. The good news is that most of the time, MLB lineups don't change much day to day other than pitchers and maybe a hitter or two depending on lefty/righty pitchers, so even in the cases that the lineup has not been posted, it will usually be very close.

If the lineups continue to have problems, we may try and find a different source for that information... please let us know if you continue to experience this.

fyi... the lineup data is separate from the Roster data... the Roster data is updated once daily on our servers. The lineup data gets synced in real time. As noted above, we may wind up having to change the roster data to twice daily... we will see how things go.

I understand and appreciate the effort. I just wanted to point it out. I have no issues making some minor adjustments to the lineup, especially if the roster is all filled in. I think people should be aware (you do pop up the list so it can be reviewed, but it could catch you if you just assume it is right).

Thanks!
ben

Thanks. I don't have a problem with your update frequency, per se. My concern is that, no matter how frequently you update, unless the updates are in real-time, a roster will potentially be out of date at game-time. If the players traded are already on MLB rosters, then presumably I can just add/subtract the players for whatever teams I'm interested in scoring a game for. (Although this begs the question as to whether manually fiddling with the pre-defined teams will cause problems.)

My bigger concern is if a player not previously on an MLB roster (and hence not a pre-defined player) is added. In this situation, how should we handle it? Do we create a temp player and edit the game after the fact once you've added the new player to the pre-defined rosters? Or do we use an existing player, and edit the game after the fact? Or is there some other, better way that I'm not thinking of? Please let me know. Thanks.

If that player actually plays, and has not been added to the team (most last minute roster changes don't actually play that same day unless it is a big name star that got traded or there was an injury for a key player and the team needed to bring someone up to replace him that day), then the best approach would probably be to just create a temporary player, score the game with that player, and the following day, you can edit the game, and change the lineup to have the "real" player. That will automatically adjust all stats, etc... to be for the "real" player, and you could then delete the temporary player you created.

If this DOES actually happen to anyone, we would love to hear about the specific situation so we can see if there is any way we can make the process better in the future.

bsweetser wrote:The Sync is actually still pulling last night's lineup for the Reds...

We actually found a place on our server late last night where it is possible cached data may have been being sent. We changed the code so data should always be fresh now, but that does not mean the source of the data will always be 100% up to date (though we've done our best to find reliable sources).

Please let us know if this continues to be an issue. As noted elsewhere, our testing has shown that the sync is usually accurate 15-30 minutes prior to game time, but our tests were much more limited than what is possible from the whole iScore Community.

Thank you.