Notes on scorebook

[bmclaurin]

FTM, where are we in the prioritization for adding the notes to the scorebook? Seems that quite a few folks have asked for this seemingly simple feature for a good while now, and I think you have indicated on the forums that it had been added to the list of future updates. I don't think the new release from last week included this feature. Just wondering how far away it is. Are we ever going to actually see this become reality?

[FTMSupport]

As a long time user, you know we do not make statements as to when a feature will be available. Yes, we will be adding this functionality. If it were simple, it would already be done. It is not as simple as it may sound to add the notes and have it be obvious what the note is for and still keep the scorebook looking nice.

[CSThunderCoach]

I would be happy to just have them listed on a separate page (similar to the pitch locations) with a notation as to where the note belongs (similar to the way the notes display in the Play-by-Play)

Bottom of inning 5
#22 Player 4 - Ground out ** Great play **

[OhioTex]

+ 1 for this being a desired functionality, (i know easier said than programmed) by being an avid user of notes, just getting them on the score card pdf as 'end notes" would be nice

[bmclaurin]

Can you at least indicate whether it is towards the top of the list of priorities or not?

[FTMSupport]

@bmclaurin - It is one of our higher priority items.

@CSThunderCoach - In your example, is the "** Great play **" the note? or is the "Ground out" part of the note? What does the "#22 Player 4" mean? Is that the player that was at bat? Keep in mind that the scorecard is trying to do something completely different than the pitch by pitch / play by play listing. The text based lisitngs are in "time order", so putting the note exactly where it came is obvious. In the case of the scorecard, we take what occurred, and apply it to the right player on the scorecard (batter's box vs a runner's box when they advance, etc). If a player steals a base or advances for any reason, we move him in "his box" on the scorecard. If player 1 reaches based, player 2 reaches base, and player 3 makes an out, then player 1 is caught stealing while player 4 is up, and then player 4 hits a grounder and is forced out, and as a note, you see:

Bottom of inning 5
#22 Player 4 - ** Great play **

What does that mean? Was it a great play to get the runner on the steal while player 4 was up? Or was it a great play to get the batter out on the ground out? Or did some other great play occur during Player 4's at bat? In a "flow of events", the context is known. On a scorecard it is not.

That is one of the challenges that makes this not just a simple and obvious thing.

The examples can go on and on like this, and there are many examples of where a note only makes sense when you know the context of the previous plays and possibly the next plays. A scorecard does not show this data well the way a pitch by pitch or play by play listing does (where we do show the notes).


@OhioTex - Same thing... if we just had end notes that read like:

Top 1, Batter 3, "ump needs glasses"
Top 1, Batter 4, "great play"
Bottom 3, Batter 2, "bad throw back to pitcher"
Bottom 4, Batter 6, "great throw"

You would not be able to relate that back to the context of the play. In the case of "great throw", was that to get a runner? or was it to get the batter? In the case of "bad throw back to the pitcher", was that when the runner advanced from 1st to 2nd while Batter 2 was up? or was it when a runner advanced from 2nd to 3rd? a scorecard does not capture enough information to show the full context of each pitch.

When we add the notes, we want to be sure we are doing it in a way that is actually useful, and we don't think just a list of notes quite does it.

[jcbeckman]

I think you might be over-thinking things here. With nebulous notes like above, you can never have them mate up with something specific on the scorecard, unless you are going to add a place for notes in nearly every step of the play ("what happened to the runner on third base?" including a note field, or hitting "Ball" opens a text area). People writing vague notes are going to have vague notes(mine tend to be more specific, but then, I am scoring table top games and the game *will* wait for me to finish typing<g>). Putting those notes on the last page isn't going to cause any harm or change any scoring, but leaving them off until you get it to somehow mate up to each portion of a play is making people wish for pretty much anything to show their notes. If you come up with a better way to do it in the future, great, but for now, I think most of us think that a list of notes actually *does* do what we want, as long as there's some way to link that back to a cell on the scorecard (like the suggestions above).

[bmclaurin]

jcbeckman, thank you. My thoughts exactly. In the primitive, pre-iScore days of baseball scorekeeping, we simply had a paper scorebook. Notes were and are an integral part of that scorekeeping system. Usually, they are scribbled in the margin or at the bottom of the page with some sort of annotation to attribute it to a particular cell. Simple, but effective (and necessary).

FTM, thanks for the heads up on the prioritization.

[OhioTex]

I thought of it like end notes, where you a small number on the "square" to point to the last page for further reading. or you could simply put a note symbol, ("n"), say top middle between RBI bullets and circle outs in a square, and then reader knows to flip to back notes and look up 'box' by inning batter number.

top 3rd inning - batter 4 (#00)
** what ever i typed in the note , vague or not**

you could add the whole text from play by play if you wanted, to add context, ** plus the user input notes ** but i think the user provided notes that are between the asterisks in play by play, are what we are most desired..

[CSThunderCoach]

FTM,
I understand your point, but that is way more detail than what I am looking for, I am guessing for others too.

If it makes it easier I would be happy with a change to the play-by-play output:

Modify from:

#7 Player 3 Reach on Error, [Player 1 Scores] ** took it off the foot **

to:
#7 Player 3 Reach on Error (E3), [Player 1 Scores] ** took it off the foot **

or

#1 Player 6 Foul, Foul, Ball, Ball, Pickoff Attempt, Ball, Foul, Ground out ** Great Play in the hole **

to
#1 Player 6 Foul, Foul, Ball, Ball, Pickoff Attempt (2-3), Ball, Foul, Hard Ground out (6-3) ** Great Play in the hole **

If you included the positions involved in the play and the strength of the hit that would go a long way in getting more use from both the play-by-play and my notes. Right now, without the context of the play, the notes are meaningless without looking at the scorebook.

When play-by-play has something like "Fly Out ** great diving catch **" You have to look at the scorebook to see who made the catch. If you could change to "Soft Fly Out (F8) ** great diving catch **" I would probably use the play-by-play more.

I shouldn't have to add the context to the note, that information was already captured during the recording of the play.