Review: Gamechanger Scorekeeping App for Youth Baseball

Baseball scoring has been done by hand for over a century. Now that most people own smartphones and tablets, many people are motivated to keep score electronically. Why?

  • Live broadcasts
  • Pitch count tracking
  • Single game boxscores, stats, and recaps
  • Season stats and spray charts

Among the many scorekeeping apps attempting to accomplish all four of these objectives, Gamechanger and iScore stand out for their comprehensive suite of features and polished user interfaces.

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Youth Baseball Stats Part 3: Mustang Kid Pitch Begins

The stats that matter most for youth baseball change dramatically as kids get older. The biggest change is the transition from coach pitch to kid pitch, which in our league happens at the age of 9.

This post is part of a series that started with Youth Baseball Stats Part 1: It’s Hard on how to gather, interpret and apply baseball data to improve youth baseball play.

Part 2 discusses stats appropriate for coach pitch.

This post discusses the stats that matter when kid pitch begins.

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Youth Baseball Stats Part 2: Pinto Coach Pitch

The stats that matter most for youth baseball are different than the stats that matter for the major leagues. This is especially true at the ages of 7 and 8 for coach pitch or machine pitch baseball.

This post continues where Youth Baseball Stats Part 1: It’s Hard left off, as I explore how to gather, interpret and apply baseball data to improve youth baseball play.

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Youth Baseball Stats Part 1: It’s Hard

Do Moneyball principles apply in little league?

Youth baseball stats are hard to track and even harder to use effectively, but it can be done. Stats can help create strong lineups in critical games, of course. Stats can help reduce bias and blind spots from relying entirely on visual observation. Most importantly, stats can help guide youth baseball coaches to drill on issues most in need of improvement.

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How to Draft in Youth Baseball

There are four keys to successful drafting in youth baseball:

  • Establish clear goals
  • Gather the player data you need
  • Organize your data for rapid access
  • Work the system to your advantage

You can get what you want on draft night with minimal fuss if you concentrate on the first three.

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Get the Best Youth Baseball Glove, not the Most Expensive

As I enter into my sixth year as a youth baseball dad (and sometimes manager or coach), I have noticed a few patterns for players struggling to catch a baseball or field a grounder:

  • Fielding skills need many repetitions in order to fully develop.
  • Field bumpiness can make grounders hard to field.
  • Lapses of attention can be a factor, especially at ages 8 and below.

But some fielding difficulty has to do with not having the right glove. So here’s a short guide for how to get the right glove, for players aged 12 or younger.

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Acer c720 Chromebook Review: Netbook Dream Becomes Reality

This review is both less and more than a typical review. It is less because there’s little analysis of hardware components or comparison with other leading Chromebooks. It is more because I explore the key question:

What makes for a good netbook?

I’ve thought a lot about netbooks over the years and have experienced various expressions of the concept with an EEE PC, an iPad, and most recently an Acer c720 Chromebook. In this post, I draw on this experience to lay out criteria for a good netbook. I then explain why the EEE PC did not satisfy these criteria, while the Acer c720 satisfies these criteria quite well.

In short: with the Acer c720 Chromebook, we finally have a good netbook.

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Best Browsers 2015: Which Browser is Best for You?

My 2009, 2010, and 2011 browser comparison posts were so popular that by early 2012 they drove nearly all the traffic to this site. Several times in 2012 I began to write my fourth annual browser comparison. I did not finish. Why?

Partly, it’s because I had other projects that seemed like a better use of my time. Mostly, it’s because there wasn’t all that much to write about. Moves to a 6-week release cycle for Chrome and Firefox led to frequent incremental changes but not much change in the grand scheme of things.

Perhaps a French phrase sums it up best: plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. The 5 major browsers have become more alike than ever. They all display tabbed pages and run web apps quickly and competently. But there are still subtle reasons you may prefer one over another.

It’s time for another comparison.

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Best Low Cost AA battery charger: BQ-CC17

I recommend only one inexpensive battery charger among hundreds of possibilities. It is the Panasonic Eneloop BQ-CC17 which can be had for $15 at Amazon in white or black, or as part of several possible bundles that include Eneloop batteries.

Update 3/12/17: A new post on this site compares this charger with two other budget chargers that have faster charging rates. The BQ-CC17 compares favorably. See Best of the Budget Chargers.

I bought a BQ-CC17 bundled with Eneloops two months ago. The rest of this post is my review of the included BQ-CC17 charger, as well as the criteria I use to eliminate other low cost chargers from consideration.

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Four Little Breakthroughs: Bikes, AA Batteries, Daypacks, Transit Cards

Big media loves to celebrate big breakthroughs. The Internet. The electric car. The smartphone. These truly are big breakthroughs (though not without their side effects).

Big media also loves to celebrate future breakthroughs. Revolutionary new battery technology. Private spacecraft. Quantum computing. Nanotechnology. Some day, these amazing technologies will be commonplace. Worth writing about? Absolutely!

But what about all the little breakthroughs—innovations that are here and now, improving people’s everyday lives? Big media can only cover big topics. So that leaves covering little breakthroughs to blogs or forums or niche web sites, like this one.

I like little breakthroughs, so here are a few of my favorites, ones that I use every day:

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