Keep stats for your child

A parent keeping their kid's book uses the roster-only player the app already has — not a second account, and never their own batting line.

There is no parent mode and there does not need to be one. A child who is too young for an account, or simply has no interest in one, is a roster-only player: a name on a team's roster that somebody else keeps score for. That is the same thing the app already offers for the teammate who will not install anything, and it is the whole answer here — nothing below asks you to make a second account, share a password, or keep your child's season in a note on your phone.

The one thing worth saying before the steps is what not to do, because it is the workaround people invent and it is hard to undo. Do not record your child's at-bats as yourself. They would land in your own batting line, on your own spray chart and in your own career totals, and separating them later means editing every at-bat one by one. Pick your child out of the picker instead and the at-bat counts for them and not for you, which is the difference between a season you can read and a season you have to explain.

On your phone

  1. Open the Teams tab. Tap your child's team if it already exists, or Create a Team at the foot of the list to make it — a team costs nothing and nobody else has to join it.
  2. Open the team's Members segment and tap Add roster player. Type the name; Jersey # and Position are optional, and the jersey is what the picker shows beside the name.
  3. At the top of that same segment, set Your role on this team to Coach — "Coaches don't bat — they aren't offered in the batter picker or lineups, and stay out of stats unless they bat."
  4. Make the game from the team's schedule, open it, and tap Record.
  5. The sheet headed "Who's up?" slides up with your child under Roster only. Tap the name, then record the at-bat exactly as you would your own.

On the web

  1. Open Teams in the sidebar. Use your child's team if a coach has already made it and invited you; otherwise make it yourself — a team costs nothing and nobody else has to join it for any of this to work.
  2. Open the Members tab and click Add roster player. Put in the name the team uses for your child, and the jersey number while you are there — it is what the roster row and the batter picker show, which matters on a roster of nine-year-olds who all answer to their first name.
  3. On the same tab, set Your role on this team to Coach. The line beside it says what that does: "Coaches don't bat — they aren't offered in the batter picker or lineups, and stay out of stats unless they bat." That is what keeps your own empty line out of the team's season table.
  4. Make the game — New Game at the top of the team's page, which fills the team in for you.
  5. Click Record at-bat. Because the roster has somebody on it, "Who's batting?" opens first; your child is under Roster only. Click the name and the ordinary recorder opens.

From then on it is the batter picker and nothing else. Every route into the recorder on a team game asks who batted before it opens, so there is no setting to remember and no way to drift back into recording their night as yours. If you are keeping the book for the whole side rather than one player, the same picker is how you do it, and scoring the game play by play walks the batting order for you.

Their numbers do not appear on your Stats screen, and that is correct rather than a bug: your stats are your plate appearances. A roster-only player's season lives on the team — in the season table with everybody else's, and on a page of their own with their totals and their spray chart on it.

On your phone

  1. Open the Teams tab, open the team, and go to its Members segment. Tap your child's name under Roster only.
  2. Their page opens with a row of season chips, starting at All seasons, then their spray chart. Season Totals is under that.
  3. SPRAY CHART on that page is their own dots, not the team's.
  4. The share arrow in that header — Share card — makes a picture of their season to send to the other parent. A roster-only player's card carries the team's join link on it instead of the website address, which is also how you invite them to take the stats over one day.

On the web

  1. Open the team and go to its Members tab. Your child is in the roster table, tagged Roster, on a wide window, and in the Roster only group on a narrow one.
  2. Click the name. Their page opens with a row of season chips, starting at All seasons, then their spray chart. Season Totals is under that — the slash line, games, at-bats, hits, home runs, RBIs.
  3. Spray chart, on the same page, draws every ball they put in play that you tapped a location for.
  4. Back on the team's Stats tab, their row sits in Season Stats beside everybody else's, and Download CSV — beside that heading on a wide window, at the foot of the tab on a narrow one — takes the whole thing into a spreadsheet — Player stats is the file with one row per player.

Other adults can share the job without anything changing. Anyone you invite to the team sees the same roster, records into the same games and reads the same page, so the other parent or a coach can take the book for the weeks you are not there. What none of them can do is turn your child's roster-only name into their own stats — that takes a claim, and a claim can only be made by somebody who has joined and is choosing their own name off the list.

And when they are old enough to want it themselves, nothing has to be re-entered. They make their own account, join the team with the invite code, and claim the name you have been keeping — every at-bat you ever typed for them becomes theirs, their career starts with the whole history in it, and not one team number changes.

Two last things. The app asks for nothing about your child beyond a name, a jersey number and a position — there is no date of birth, no email and no account, because a roster-only player is a label on a roster rather than a person the app knows. And if you never bat yourself, say so on your own profile: the Coach option under How you use Slug Stats points Home and Stats at your team instead of asking a parent for their own at-bats every time they open the app.

On your phone

  1. On Home, tap your initial in the top right to open Profile, then tap How you use Slug Stats.
  2. The screen is How You Use Slug Stats. Tap Coach — "I keep score for my team, not my own at-bats".
  3. The line under the two cards is the promise: "Coach mode reframes Home, Stats, and Games around your team instead of personal at-bats. Your data is never changed — switch back anytime."

On the web

  1. Open Profile. On a wide window, click your name at the foot of the sidebar and choose Profile, the first item in the menu. On a narrower window it is the round button with your initial in the top right-hand corner.
  2. The first card is How you use Slug Stats. Click Coach, the one reading "I score for my team".
  3. Nothing is hidden and nothing is deleted: your own at-bats, if you have any, are all still there, and clicking Player puts the screens back.

Not sure what a stat on this screen means? The glossary explains it.

Related guides

Still stuck?

Try the rest of the guides or the support page. Sending feedback from inside the app reaches a real person.