Score a game live, play by play

Live scoring is opt-in per game and only offered on team games. Everything it records still lands as ordinary at-bats, so your stats, spray chart and box score need nothing special afterwards — and anyone else on the team sees the game updating on their own device.

Score this game live only appears on a team game that has no at-bats on it yet and has not been finished — record a single at-bat by hand, or mark the game final, and the row is gone. The play log can only account for the plays it records itself, so on a game that already has at-bats it would report a score that ignored them. If that is the game in front of you, delete the at-bats it already has and the row comes back, or leave it alone and score your next game live from the first pitch. A game you marked final has to be reopened first: Reopen game in the ⋯ menu on the web, or Reopen on the Final row on the phone. Once a game is being scored the same row reads Resume live scoring, and once it is over it opens the play log.

Start scoring stays disabled until the game has a batting order.

Past that, both apps take you through the same six settings before the first pitch: how many innings, whether there is a run cap per inning, whether the final inning is capped or open, whether a mercy rule applies, whether to track our pitcher, and whether to score their batters too. The final-inning setting only shows while a run cap is on — with the cap off there is nothing for it to lift. Our pitcher starts off; turn it on and the other team's half asks what each of their batters did, which is what builds your pitchers' stats. Score their batters too keeps their runners, hits and box score the way ours are kept. Under it, Their lineup is optional: enter it if you know it, reuse the one from the last time you played that team, or skip it and type each batter's name or number as they come up. Both switches start wherever your team's last live game left them, and Score their batters too stays on once their first batter has been recorded.

With Score their batters too on, their half works like ours, in the other team's colour: the same outcome buttons, their runners on the diamond, and the runs worked out from where the runners finish. Type each batter's name or number in Who's up?, or leave it empty if you don't know. When their first batter comes back around, tap Back to the top, and from then on the app knows their order and fills in who's up. A new name in someone's turn counts as a sub, and a late arrival can be moved to the end of their order in one tap. Afterwards the game page shows their hits and errors on the line score and a batting table for them, where you can tap any batter to give them a name.

Corrections go through the play log rather than by editing an at-bat: tap or click the play, fix it, and everything after it is recalculated. Two people can score the same game at once — a phone in the dugout and a tablet on the bench both write to the same log.

You never type an RBI while scoring live. They are worked out from where the runners finish, minus the plays that do not credit one — a double play, an error, or a strikeout the batter reached on.