http://iscoresports.com/

I'm curious about the way pinch-hit substitutions seem to work. Situation: Jones is batting 5th and playing rf for the home team. Smith pinch-hits for Jones. I note the offensive change. Smith grounds out to end the inning.

When iScore switches to the top of the next inning, it still shows Jones as being the right-fielder. I have to go in and change the fielders by hand. I'd prefer that iScore assume that Smith takes Jones' spot in the field...since that is usually what happens. Obviously, it's possible that Smith pinch-hit and then someone else went into rf or maybe other shifts take place. But, the usual behavior is that the pinch-hitter takes the batter's position in the field. Even if that doesn't happen, though, the original fielder does not return to the field...unless you're using courtesy players which is probably not the default situation for most people using iScore. Or maybe it is?

Regardless, is there a compelling reason to not automatically replace the fielder when the program switches from offense to defense?

The biggest reason for not automatically doing it is we are following a "score what you see" approach to scorekeeping and trying to make few assumptions because any assumption we make will be wrong for someone. If you happen to know the person is also taking over defensively, you can make that change at the same time by simply clicking the toggle between offense and defense and setting the player's position as well.

We used to do this substitution automatically in early versions of iScore, but it actually led to people being highly confused about double switches and other situations that can occur. In youth sports, it is common for defensive positions to change inning to inning, and in Pro sports, it seems that pinch hitters are very often involved in double switches.

So basically, we decided the best approach is to allow you to enter what you see (which is a different batter coming to the plate), and when the team goes to defense, you can again enter what you see (who is in which position), and iScore will take care of figuring out who was a sub vs just a position change.