Showcase tournament options

[KevinRees]

Our softball team plays in college showcase tournaments. These tournaments have free-substitution rules. Players are sometimes put in to bat at a moment's notice because a college coach wants to see them bat. The same player can bat multiple times in an inning. They are not usually subbing for the current batter in the lineup -- they are just inserted into the lineup for that at-bat. I have seen at least one other query about this and a work-around posted by OhioTex.

The main problem I have after this happens is making sure the right player is shown batting from that point forward. If I miss one, the stats will be wrong for two people. At a minimum, it would be helpful to have a toggle in the Game Settings: "Verify Each Batter" which, when enabled, would show me or prompt me to select the next batter with the expected batter shown as the default. Ideally, it would be great to also be able to temporarily insert a batter who may or may not already be somewhere else in the lineup. The next time around, the lineup would go back to normal. Of course, these changes would need to be implemented in a way that didn't create extra work or confusion when scoring normal games, but FTM's programmers are pretty good -- I know they can handle it. Also, I'm not as concerned about how the pretty book looks afterward as the player stats.

A side question: how many times can a substitution be made in a batting position? I have seen 7 listed in a position in the scorebook for some of the games I've scored after all of the subbing.

For those who may not be aware (I wasn't until recently), this may seem like an unusual request for a small niche, but college showcase tournaments are pretty common and some are very large. I was told our next one may have 250 teams attending.

[FTMSupport]

There is no limit to the number of subs in a batting position, so you can use OhioTex's workarounds for any number of substitutions. If you miss one, you can always do substitution edits after the game to make sure players get the right stats. Though quite frankly, the stats for a showcase event are really not going to be relevant if the rules of baseball are not being followed.

To "verify each batter", you can look at who is currently On Deck. That is shown now on the scoring screen. If the next batter is not correct, you can edit the batter before they even come to the plate.

Since iScore is really focused on "scoring a game", and the idea of "showcasing players" does not really follow the rules of baseball, it will probably never be a perfect fit. We will put these requests on our enhancement list, but unless we start hearing from lots of users they would like to see special functionality added for this case, it is likely it will remain a low priority, and the workarounds will have to be the method for scoring these types of events.

(Other examples we have heard of for showcase events... batter gets hit by ball, but they really want to see the batter hit, so they let him stay at bat. What do you do with the pitching stats? Shouldn't the fact that the pitcher hit a batter be on the stat sheet? This is just one concrete example we have heard of where things can start to fall apart.)

[KevinRees]

Thank you for your reply.

[Egghead_#8]

Having this discussion on Twitter this morning and found this thread. College showcases can be a hassle to score in these scenarios. There's really no way to handle this. With paper you can always make notes / arrows / any kind of comments to show what happened and adjust easily enough. But with iScore if for example the #4 hitter comes up with bases loaded and strikes out, then #5 comes up and strikes out, then college coach tells team coach to let #4 hit again, so she, #4, goes up and doubles to LCF clearing the bases, then #6 comes up and grounds out. There's really no way to properly score that.

I get the argument about baseball rules and agree. It's just that these odd-ball showcase rules put us digital scorekeepers in a real bind. I'm tempted to not even bother scoring these showcase games just because this scenario COULD happen but then my players are missing out on possibly valuable stats.

A way to tag a game as a "showcase" to allow for lineup adjustments such as this would be awesome. Basically it'd be like inserting a row in excel if you think about it and then assigning that player in that spot (even if already in lineup). Then next time around you just skip it because most likely she's not hitting there the next time around. I imagine this would be a massive undertaking in coding it. Was hoping though since this thread is from 2010 maybe some progress has been made?

[FTMSupport]

We have not done anything to try and make this scenario work. The problem is in a showcase, there are no rules. We can not implement "free form, do whatever you want scorekeeping" and still have a system that has checks and balances to make sure the scorekeeper is doing things right. It's definitely not as simple as just tagging a game as a showcase - there is logic in place to follow the rules of baseball, and a showcase game can unravel all those rules.

We will continue to keep showcases in mind as we look to expand the capabilities of iScore, but it is still a very low priority. As you can see, you are the first person in almost 3 years to comment on this which helps reaffirm that this request would be a tremendous amount of work for a very small use case.

[Egghead_#8]

Thanks FTM. Yeah I understand not an easy thing to do and wouldn't expect it anytime soon as it is a niche type need (only play so many showcases each season and just for certain age groups). Just a wishlist item that would make iScore even more useful.

[OhioTex]

wow egghead. you went deep into the archives on that one.. It is about 3 years old.. ..

I had long since forgotten this discussion. the good news is substitutions are easier now in iscore than back then. .and teh workaround still applies.. but having a few more years under my belt, i think my recommendation is to not even bother on showcase event like that instead. .just sit back and enjoy them. the only stat that matters is what the scouts see and think, everything is tilted in the ones i have seen.