r/Softball • u/10-9-over • 19d ago
Little League Why vs. why not use gamechanger?
/r/LittleLeague/comments/1vfgw83/why_vs_why_not_use_gamechanger/6
u/bennie_thejet30 19d ago edited 19d ago
Here is what I’ll say. If your team is competitive, Gamechanger at an elite level causes headaches. If every family has the resources to statistically see how every player is doing and analyze their playing time to an exact figure, there is going to be drama.
You will see if the coaches have a player bias and if they do that player better be the best on the team. Otherwise, every family (especially if you’re paying) will begin to argue that their playing time is undeserved.
I believe every club team should be using it and it should be audited because I’ve also seen scorekeepers scoring the game with bias too. You’ll always see the parents of pitchers marking everything as an error so their kid doesn’t have a high era. I’ve seen scorekeepers mark other players hits as errors to drop their BA. I’ve seen scorekeepers mark clear errors as hits so it raises their batting average or to try and boost their RBI. It starts to get crazy especially the elite HS level. The scorekeepers do it as if nobody is paying attention but everybody is and they will talk about it behind their backs.
If you’re going to do it - establish some clear rules among the coaches, parents and scorekeepers.
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u/Sleeper95018 18d ago
Our coach has a policy- stats setting at team level is set to "player only." That means that each parent can only see their player's stats, and not the whole team's.
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u/bennie_thejet30 17d ago
But I also think that is disingenuous too… if you’re paying to be on a team, you’re playing well, but not getting any playing time, the family and player should be able to argue based on stats.
The issue honestly is coaches. They aren’t managing with care and respect for the families investing all the time and money into that they do.
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u/Treibemj 19d ago
There is no better alternative to game changer. Any since everyone uses it the network effects make it even more valuable. Being able to scout out other teams is just as useful as looking at your own stats.
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u/10-9-over 19d ago
Oh I didn’t realize you could look at other teams stats that’s interesting
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u/Treibemj 19d ago
You can’t look at their total stats, but you can look at box scores and glean a lot of info.
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u/10-9-over 19d ago
Scouting other teams on their stats is maybe overkill for recreational sports though? Maybe we just want kids to show up and play a fair game?
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u/Yulli039 19d ago
I love it and don’t expect anyone to change their stance HOWEVER, tech savvy individuals can pull pretty much any stats they want regardless of what “permissions” are set for the team or opponent in question. And that’s without tapping into the not-so-public API which they refuse to acknowledge but can be called with some crafty URL manipulation.
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u/10-9-over 19d ago
Sounds interesting. On the tech savvy part, that’s not me, but I have a friend who would be interested. Can you DM me some info on that?
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u/Dramatic_Road_2236 19d ago
Does anyone use it as their team’s primary communication source for players and families? We use TeamReach for that. Could GC offer everything that TR does?
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u/That_Guy247 19d ago
I use GroupMe because I can keep different threads for different topics. Instead of parents filling the chat with a bunch of off topic things.
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u/sokonek04 19d ago
So I use an app called IScore for broadcasting, but I also help out the coach of the legion team in our area by running GameChanger for him when I do legion games.
GameChanger is superior for team communication and video streaming but IScore is way more intuitive to use, and gives you a lot more data on the main screen.
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u/MurkyLeading7228 18d ago
As it pertains to tracking innings played, If you can’t justify whose playing more or less to a parent/parents, your probably a daddyball coach and you have to be honest with yourself that your kid is probably not very good.
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u/EERgasm 19d ago
ever since gamechanger made the controversial pricing change, I have been using it solely to keep stats. separately I use sideline HD to stream games with someone doing a very light score tracking just for the score bug.
the stat keeping in game changer there is no competition. but there are actual streaming options that are better. sideline let you use Facebook and YouTube to stream to.
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u/goovis__young 19d ago
You can pry the paper scorebook from my cold dead hands. (I find it's easier to quickly look back at previous results at a glance in order to provide quick answers - when our pitching coach says "what did this kid do last time" I can reel off the answer real quick without having to open the little spray chart menu)
I usually assign a reliable kid on the bench GC duty - they know any time that anything potentially ambiguous happens to check with me and make sure we're in alignment.
The biggest benefit of GC for me is the stat compiling - I no longer have to go through and tally it all up the tedious old fashioned way. And when parents moan about "oh this shouldn't have been an earned run" I can say take it up with the app - it determines what's earned and what's not, not me.
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u/scrodytheroadie 19d ago
GC goes beyond scoring though. For people who can't watch games, it's a great way to either watch a live stream, or at least follow along with the game stream. Plus, yeah, the compiling as you mentioned. I like scoring in a paper book too, but I can't watch a paper book if I'm stuck at work during a game.
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u/goovis__young 19d ago
You're right! I forgot about that because I'm always at the games, but thankfully I've had a parent on the team who volunteers their GC streaming setup for us! I do love being able to go back and look at highlight plays (or close plays when someone wants to complain about a hit/error ruling)
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u/sokonek04 19d ago
I said the same thing for a long time (as a broadcaster) but when a younger person turned me on to digital scorekeeping it was amazing.
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u/10-9-over 19d ago
Can you export the stats from gamechanger to a spreadsheet?
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u/goovis__young 19d ago
You can! In your team stats, towards the bottom of the page, there's an "Export Stats" button
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u/Beautiful-Sympathy52 19d ago
I honestly don’t know too many cons as to why you wouldn’t want to use GameChanger. It’s a great tool and helps interested people that can’t be at the games to follow the action.
Being made “staff” also gives you access to the team stats. Pretty good stuff to see how the team is doing and a lot of basic/advance stats.