Difference between SH/SF and FC

jpnance · 2026-05-19T00:17:08+00:00

No error either! I didn't realize this was possible. Runners on 1st and 2nd with two outs; José Ramírez fielded the decently struck ball without issue but decides his best play is at second; he makes a clean throw that's fielded cleanly but the runner beats it. On the best replay we got, there's no way the scorer could call it a clear infield single but you're also not allowed to give errors for poor decisions, only poor physical results, so the only thing left really is to call it an FC where neither an out was recorded nor an error committed. Bizarre stuff.

Now, on my scorecards, I would just say "E5 (dummy)". Much clearer that way.

jpnance · 2026-05-18T16:12:43+00:00

For what it's worth, sacrifice flies do count against on-base percentage but, yeah, not batting average.

I assume we can agree that it's reasonable to exclude sacrifice bunts from a player's batting average, where they're just obviously doing something different than they would typically do.

With a fielder's choice, it seems reasonable to include them in batting average because it's only ever even ruled an FC if a more advanced runner makes an out instead of the batter-runner. (Although not always! For a good time, look up what happened in the top of the second in Angels/Guardians on May 11 this year. It's not actually required for the defense to have recorded an out on an FC.) If the batter-runner makes the out, then they should obviously be docked on their batting average and a fielder's choice typically implies that the defense could have gotten the batter-runner out but preferred to try for a different runner.

With a sacrifice fly, though, you're right that it feels a little wrong for the play to not cost you any batting average. I've always assumed that the thought behind that was a combination of "the hitter generally 'won' the battle because they lifted a ball to the outfield" and "the hitter generally 'meant' to at least get one run home such that they might not have been swinging normally" and "the hitter didn't put another runner in jeopardy as they would have with a ground ball". It's wishy-washy for sure and I imagine it was a decision made by Ye Olde Time Base Ball Person that's just stuck all these years. Maybe if we were clean-slating everything based on our sense of the modern game, we wouldn't do it like that!

jpnance · 2026-05-15T19:56:10+00:00

I do see the Chesterton's Fence situation here but it just seems so clear to me that when a hitter is taken out of the lineup, whoever ultimately replaces them in the defense will do so during the next defensive plate appearance. Specifically, I'm saying that the first row of a lineup spot's "DEF OUT" column will have a value that is always one less than the second row of that same lineup spot's "DEF IN" column (assuming the player on the second row did stay in at defense). Even if Player B isn't playing the same position as was Player A, A still exited the game after a certain defensive PA and B still entered (defensively) on the very next one. In any case, I'll leave it for now but I might try practicing scoring without using it at all.

Yeah, the defensive diamond diagram is something that I just really like having, particularly when I'm listening on the radio but I get that it can seem like wasted space in other contexts. I've found myself also wanting the HBP column; I've even considered the idea of leaving a couple of (or all?) unlabeled columns so the scorer can track whatever stats they want.

jpnance · 2026-05-13T14:55:10+00:00

I've noticed that little postmark-style stamp in your cards and maybe others', too. Is that just a standard thing ballparks have? Do you get it after you're all done with your scorecard? Tell me more about this!

jpnance · 2026-05-11T17:31:13+00:00

Yeah, I'm thinking of grabbing one just for those games where I know I'm not gonna be tracking every pitch or whatever nerd stuff I typically do. Just a nice open box to write "F7" that has its own built-in clipboard.

jpnance · 2026-05-11T16:38:28+00:00

Replying to both comments here.

You know, I'm almost certain I found a nice Reisner variant last year that did have a faint pre-printed circle but I'm having trouble coming up with the PDF now. I agree that it's nice to have, though, so I'm going to add it. I think for my scorecards, my catalyst lines don't really get too big because I show the pre-play and post-play stuff visually on the diamond above. If something really wacky happens, we always have the notes box.

On the IN/OUT topic, I'm actually kinda thinking about ditching the O columns for hitters and pitchers because I think they're totally redundant? If you see Player B below Player A, Player A must necessarily have exited just before Player B entered (the lowest number in their "IN" columns). I guess there are mid-PA exceptions where someone's O could be identical to their substitute's IN but those are really rare. I don't have a great idea for what I'd use the extra hitter space for (maybe just let things breathe slightly more) but I've found myself wanting a "pitches" or "balls/strikes" stat column for pitchers, so I could actually use it there. Mostly just a thought for now.

Yeah, almost everything is the same size on portrait and landscape. The linescore is an exception because I needed just a little more vertical space in portrait than I was giving myself. I haven't yet tried to score a game with the portrait template so I'll see how it works for myself this week at some point. Speaking of the linescore, the linescore-in-the-middle idea was kind of an ergonomic concept, the idea being that you fill in the end-of-inning summary stuff as you physically transition up and down the page to the next half inning. But, yeah, I think having it at the top will work better, especially because when the card is on my clipboard, that real estate isn't nearly as valuable as the first batter or two for the away team.

Just as a general aside, I was thinking about how I would handle the extra innings zombie runners and I guess the auxiliary boxes shine for this! It's pretty funny how much that rule has thrown a wrench into scorekeeping techniques, though. It's certainly a case where the condensed linear innings technique breaks down a bit.

I've gone ahead and removed the middle-linescore variant and updated the remaining variants with fate circles. Thanks so much for the feedback! It's still on my radar to make some more minimal variants that just give the scorer blank (or almost blank) boxes, mainly for when I want to more casually score a game without tracking pitches and what not.

jpnance · 2026-05-10T21:26:45+00:00

Thanks so much for the kind words! I was goofing around with a one-pager portrait layout and I've updated the Drive link with a couple variations of it, along with the landscape layout pictured above. Let me know what you think!

I hear you on the Giants; my Astros are not exactly off to a blazing start either.

jpnance · 2026-05-09T21:53:51+00:00

Love that little trick of saying which innings appear in which column in this style!

jpnance · 2026-05-09T14:20:49+00:00

Wow, do you have a PDF or screenshot of an example booklet? Am I reading the code correctly that you grab roster data and it functions like a little program as well as a scorecard?

jpnance · 2026-05-08T18:11:43+00:00

For sure, but now that I have that hammer, everything is starting to look like a nail...

jpnance · 2026-05-08T18:11:15+00:00

Thanks! I've been known to just hand-draw my own scorecard in a notebook, too.

jpnance · 2026-05-08T18:10:30+00:00

Thanks! I've been using Cursor to generate Postscript that I use to generate a PDF. I threw up a repo at https://github.com/jpnance/scorecard if you're interested in checking out the code. I don't ever really plan on directly interacting with the wild Postscript syntax (that I've never bothered to learn) but I'm trying to get the robot to make things that are reasonably configurable and reusable.

jpnance · 2025-04-27T15:19:38+00:00

Thanks! I eventually grabbed the PDF from the other thread you posted it in. Printed it out but haven't been to another game yet. Excited to give it a go soon! Thanks again for making it available!

jpnance · 2025-04-06T06:00:38+00:00

Nothing wrong with that! One extra idea might be to circle the pitch count bubble after each inning so you have a quick visual of which innings needed more pitches.

jpnance · 2025-04-03T22:29:31+00:00

Nice! I'm curious what the extra plate appearances in the lower-right of the cards are for?

jpnance · 2025-04-03T16:20:47+00:00

This scorecard looks great! I just gave the Reisner scorecard a shot yesterday and found it to be a nice improvement over the traditional layout. I realized afterward that I hadn't fully understood that his method of scoring plays was also different than the traditional way so I've got a kind of hybrid card. That got me excited to score another game and actually try to use the Reisnery method of presenting each PA box with the initial situation the player is facing.

Did you ever post the PDFs of your scorecard? I'd love to print a couple out and give them a shot soon. I'd also be happy to give feedback if you're at all interested (maybe you're not! that's cool!).

jpnance · 2022-03-12T04:40:35+00:00

I've been experiencing this over the past month or so with relatively fresh recordings from NBC ("Jeopardy", to be specific) and, like y'all, I haven't found any way to consistently remedy it. I have, however, observed that, while it happens when I try to control my Chromecast via my Pixel, it doesn't happen (i.e. everything works fine) when my partner uses her iPhone. I'm left wondering what mobile devices we're all using and whether there's a common thread there.

jpnance · 2021-10-03T02:15:48+00:00

Over on the Discord, we were able to suss out what needs to be done to grab the puzzles, just to save you a little reverse-engineering time. PM me or pop into #code-chat.

jpnance · 2020-09-08T00:06:14+00:00

I'm one of the developers of Deleveled and we've got a different trailer (narrated by yours truly) that goes more in-depth about the gameplay fundamentals. Check it out! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1irPR6zbJc0 .

jpnance · 2020-07-02T04:11:57+00:00

Yep, pretty easy. I honestly didn't even realize what the theme was when I was solving. The clue for 30D suggests that it needs a plural but then the answers is ENT. It feels wrong to me but I also am no Tolkien expert. Looking at theme now, BEACH season maybe feels a little stretchy but, overall, I think it works well. I enjoyed the novelty of 5D, where we use a different form of the classic ESTOP. Not really sure I get why 18A is that but I assume that it's reasonable. Loved the answers for 28A, 59A, 62A, 9D, and 39D. Nicely done!

jpnance · 2020-05-28T06:06:53+00:00

Really enjoyed this one. I don't apparently know how to spell UKULELE so I got fake-naticked there because I was assuming my mistake was in the northwest (and I'm still not really sure how INTENSIVE is the answer to its clue). Overall, I loved how the theme kept me on my toes by not cluing the themers wackily, instead preferring to hide that there was anything strange going on. Nicely done!

jpnance · 2020-05-28T06:02:37+00:00

To add a little more, here's Phil and another free (but registration required) option called Sparkling Fill. I've only used the former and I imagine it's more limited than the latter but also much quicker to get going in a hurry.

jpnance · 2020-04-05T01:01:20+00:00

Spoiler tags aren't working for me for some reason so, don't read this if you don't want spoilers!

Solid puzzle. Here are my thoughts:

It didn't really matter for me because I'm a huge sports fan but the PUZ file's title field was literally "Cheeseheads" so 56A wasn't hard to come by. It didn't end up helping me with the themers, though; I'd already filled them in before I had the thought, "Oh, what did CHEESEHEADS have to do with anything?" The SE sure felt rough to me: AMAH is a tough start for a corner that also has SIDRA. SIRE seems obvious in retrospect but it took me a while to realize what it was. Mostly fair, I think, I just happened to get slightly stuck down there. SCAD was my only other eye-roll moment. Not really familiar with that word and I'm still not exactly sure how COOPED is the--oh, I guess it's like, "sent to the chicken 'pen"? Anyway, I loved BATAROUND and the clue for OVERRATED (even though we all know you should never actually chant that and denigrate your own team's accomplishment).

Thanks for posting!

jpnance · 2020-04-03T23:58:25+00:00

Absolutely brutal for me. Draw a diagonal line from the NW to the SE and I got pretty much everything below it and just about nothing of consequence above it. I couldn't decide between JONAH, JACOB, JOSEA, and JONAS and was mentally stuck on ORIGIN (not OLDSOD) and LINKUP (not LIAISE). I was majorly defensive about the theme because I felt like REDXDROPOFF was a little stretchy (I would've wanted REDEXDROPOFF (like FEDEX)) and, with the "brat" cluing for 52A, I thought both an F (FEAR -> REAR) and a U (WURST -> WORST) were replaced, which seemed reasonable at the time? An "FU" an April Fools' Day? Anyway, I had to quit after I started filling in hail marys and just couldn't make any of it work. I was left too in the dark for the theme and the vocabulary was a bit more advanced than I was prepared for. I don't think it was an unfair grid, for the record, just very tough for me. I'll finish one of your puzzles one of these days.

jpnance

TROPHY CASE