We have looked at the iScore Baseball Scorekeeper from Faster Than Monkeys on numerous occasions in the past.  So, when I saw that they had released an updated version for the iPad, I really had not planned on writing a whole new review.   I went into the new app planning to just write a quick update highlighting a few of the new features.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the forum, as they say…well, really two funny things.  First, as much as I loved this app on my iPod Touch, that app cannot even compare to the experience it offers on the iPad.  This is the same app almost in name only, so I determined that the newly updated app deserved its own separate review.   Additionally, the folks at Faster Than Monkeys recently partnered with ESPN.  The result of that partnering is a newly rebranded app, which is sure to bring a myriad of new features designed to bring you even closer to the game you (and I) love.  So, with that preamble out of the way, let’s go ahead and take a second look at this fantastic app.

More Than Just A Scorecard:  I first discovered this app when I was looking for a solution which would allow me to score games.  iScore will do that, and we will take a much closer look at how that works on the iPad in a bit.  I have to say, though, that if you are only using this app to score games then you are really missing a large part of the experience.  With iScore, you can manage your complete baseball experience.  This app allows you to be as involved (or not) as you wish, keeping scores, stats, player, team, and league info, and plenty more.  This app offers so much, it could probably replace about half of the staff of a professional baseball team (but don’t tell them that).  Needless to say, iScore offers far too many features to cover everything in one review.  i am going to go through some of the highlights and leave the rest for you to discover.

Getting Started:  To get started with this app, you need to enter your players into the app, assign them to teams, and establish the leagues in which the teams will compete.  This is all much easier than it sounds.  You can do it manually by using the Player Manager, Team Manager, and League Manager.

We’ll start with the Player Manager.   To create a new player, all you need to do is assign him a name and set him up as a righty, lefty, or switch hitter (and thrower).  Once you have created a player, they will be added to your player list, where they will be available for you to view their stats at any time…or even check out a complete baseball card.  I did find this list could get pretty long.  It would have been nice if a search option had been included here (though you can scroll through the alphabet and jump to the correct letter).

Once you have added your players, head over to the Team Manager, where you can create teams and set up your rosters.  You will set the individual game batting order later.

You can then use the League Manager to create a league, in which your teams will compete.

Frankly, all of this set up is pretty easy, but can take some time getting all of that data inputted.  The good news, however, is that you do not need to do all of this.  If you plan to use this app for professional baseball games, you can download the 2010 Major League Roster.  This includes every player on every team in the MLB.  The hard work of data entry is already done for you.  These rosters are updated daily, and include all stats, so make sure you hit the update button before you use any of these teams.  The MLB 2010 Rosters will cost an additional $19.95, but if you plan to attend a lot of games, then the time this will save is well worth the cost.

Scoring A Game: What I love about the iPad version of this app is that they really took advantage of the increased screen real estate to fix one of my biggest complaints about the iPhone version.  In the previous versions, there were just too many screens.  In order to record the game, you had to switch screens so many times, I was constantly losing myself in the app, and losing track of the game.  Here, everything is pretty much centered around one main screen, which makes scoring the game incredibly easy.

Before you get there, though, you will need to set your lineup.  Just choose the game you plan to score and then hit the Play button.  This will take you to the team roster (you can toggle between home and visitor to get both sides setup properly.  From here, just select the starting lineup by dragging and dropping your players into the correct order, and designating their positions.  The really cool thing here is that if you are using the downloaded MLB rosters, then you can just hit sync and the starting 9 will be preset for you.

OK. Let’s get to the interface.  Across the top if your traditional scoreboard.  Here, you will find the current score, inning, as well as the balls, strikes, and outs.  I did think it was pretty cool that the whole thing resembles an old fashioned scoreboard, even going so far as using red and green lights to signify balls and strikes.  That being said, these “lights” were pretty small on a full screen, and really got somewhat lost up there in the corner.  I would have liked this to be larger and more prominent.   Beneath that, you will find the complete line score, tracking the score by inning, as well as the total number of runs, hits, errors, and runners left on base (“L”).  That last one is not often included on a traditional line score, and it took me a few moments to figure out what it meant.  That being said, I liked having it there.  Really, quite useful information.

Continuing down the screen, you will find a list of the starting lineup for each team.  Obviously, it is organized by batting order, and also includes each players’ number and position.   Now, I will say that when I tap on one of these names, I expected to be able to make substitutions.  That seemed logical to me.  Not so much.  While there is a vastly improved method for making substitutions (we will get to that later), you cannot do it from here.

Tapping a player will, however, bring up their player card for you to view.  The player card is pretty cool, though if I am being completely honest, substitutions would have made a lot more sense here.

To the left, you will find an inning-by-inning, pitch-by-pitch summary of the game.  Every time you record an action in the game, it will show up here.  It is really pretty cool, and it gives you a fantastic record of the game.  This can be especially useful for coaches and baseball professionals, who want to find a pitcher’s or hitter’s strengths and weaknesses.

The rest of the screen is what you are going to use to input the game.  These are the tools you will use to actually score things.

First is the diamond.  Obviously, this is a baseball diamond.  Each defensive position shows the name and number of the player at that position.  Just tap the player to make a defensive substitution.

I mention that first because substitutions are one of the areas I really criticized in previous versions of this app.  I love this new substitute on the fly system.  Unfortunately, I found it to did not quite work as expected.

As you can see in this screen shot, I substituted Delwyn Young at First Base, but when I look at the Pirates lineup above, no change has been made.  This occurred sporadically and unpredictably.  I am hoping this just a bug, which can be easily resolved soon.  In the meantime, in order to change the lineup, you need to go in manually and make that change using the starting lineup.  This really needed to work better.  I think the developers are on the right track with this substitution system, it just needs to work better in order to be truly useful.

Which finally brings us to the pitch…and scoring the game.  Once the pitcher throws the ball, there are only five options: ball, strike, foul, out, or in play.  Those five options appear beneath the diamond.  For each pitch, just tap the appropriate option.  If it is a ball, strike, or foul, then it will be recorded appropriately.

If the pitch resulted in an out or in play, then the app will pop up asking you for additional information, including the location of the hit, who made the play, and where all of the runners ended up.  Although these menus had more options than I might have preferred, it really makes it incredibly easy to score the game in just a few simple steps.

For you advanced users or coaches, out there, you can even use the final panel to track the type, placement, and speed of each pitch.  That would be the section in the bottom right hand section of the screen.  Just tap the box to show the location of the pitch.  I did find it odd here that you could show this in relation to the pitcher or catcher, but not the batter.  Since balls and strikes are actually called in relation to the batter, that would seem to have made a lot more sense to me.  You can also tap any of the pitches on the side of that box to designate the type of pitch thrown.

Finally, the dial on the other side can be spun to record the pitch speed.  I will say that this was a bit cumbersome.  It ranges from 40-110 miles per hour, and it can take a bit to scroll from one end to the other.   What is really cool here, though, is that you can use this space to view every pitch at once.  The screen will display each pitch’s location, color coded by the type.  Pretty cool if you ask me, and a fantastic tool for pitching and batting coaches.

Finally, each subsequent time the batter comes up, the app will display green (safe) and red (out) lines showing the result of each of his previous at-bats.

I thought this app did a fantastic job of anticipating everything which can happen on a baseball diamond, and making it abundantly accessible.  The only problem I had was the lack of an easy way to manually edit things.  I’m not going to lie to you.  Sometimes, when I watch a game, I get distracted.  I may miss things.  Maybe that runner on third scored and I did not notice it because I was off getting a hot dog, or talking to my friend.  The next inning, I realize I have a mistake.  On a scorecard, I could just move my pencil back and make the change.  In iScore, there is no way to do that.  Sure, there is the Undo button, which is helpful if you score a hit, only to find that it was later called an error.  That makes it easy to go back and fix the immediate mistake.  But what do you do when you miss the mistake until later?  The lack of any ability to go back and make corrections is a real problem on this one, which I hope will be fixed soon.

Keeping and Sharing Stats: In addition to keeping score, iScore gives you quite a few options for summarizing the games and tracking stats.  As you might expect, you can easily view the full scorecard and box scores for each time at any time during the game.

You can also view complete batting, pitching, and fielding stats for each team.

More importantly, however, you can upload the data from each game to the i-Scorecast website, where you can create complete reports for each player on your team.  You can then create an i-Scorecentral admin website, where you can share all of the data and reports with your team and coaches.  I was, however, disappointed to find that this online functionality would cost an additional $20 to test out.  Nonetheless, you coaches out there can see what this feature can accomplish by checking out these examples.

Price: The biggest problem I had with this app was the price.  It seemed to get a little over the top.  It costs $9.99 to get the app, and this is not a universal app, so even if you owned it on your iPhone or iPod Touch, you will still need to dish out $10 to get it on your iPad.  That being said, the user experience on the iPad was incredibly superior to the user experience on the iPod Touch’s tiny little screen.  Really, I would not have a problem if that $10 was the end of things.  But then it will cost you an additional $20 to link into the MLB rosters, plus $20 per team to access the online stat tracking features.   This all just struck me as a bit excessive, especially when you consider that most of the people looking for those advanced online stat tracking tools are probably unpaid volunteer coaches.

Conclusion: Setting the price aside, this is an absolutely fantastic app.  Personally, I tended to use it for scoring individual games, and it worked like a charm.  The great thing about it, though, is that it will work well for people like me, but it will also work for you , whatever your needs may be.  Whether you are a casual fan, a coach, or a baseball professional, this puts the tools you need right in front of you.  Toss in some complex and difficult calculations, all of which are performed instantly, and you have one heck of an app.  Far more than just a scorecard.  Toss in the experts at ESPN and you can only imagine where this one might lead.

[UPDATE: I exchanged several long emails with the developers over at Faster Than Monkeys today, and they offered a few clarifications, which I wanted to share.

On substitutions, I noted that I had problems here.  When I made a defensive change, that change was not properly reflected in the lineup.  Faster Than Monkeys clarified that offensive and defensive substitutions are made separately in different tabs on the same screen, a point which I completely missed.  Here is their excellent explanation of how substitutions were designed to work:

We follow a "score what you see" paradigm. On the substitution screen, there is an Offensive and Defensive tab (as can be seen even in your screenshot). As a scorekeeper (especially in youth sports), you can have defensive players come into the game and you do not know who they came in for (you can have 3 or 4 new players appear in the field each inning). So we allow you to make the defensive substitution and offensive substitution separately, and iScore reconciles these substitutions. This makes an otherwise impossible task easily doable. When you know a player is also hitting for a particular player, you can make that offensive change at the same time, or you can wait until they are at bat and just make the offensive substitution at this time. This also makes it easy to handle the often unfamiliar to new fans "double switch". You can make the offensive change when the pinch hitter comes in, then on defense, two new players appear. As the scorekeeper, unless you happen to know a lot about baseball, all you see is that someone new batted, and now on defense, there are two new players --- you don't necessarily know which player batted for who.

I also indicated that I had some problems with making corrections.  This was a noticeable omission, which caused problems for me when I missed a play.  Faster Than Monkeys told me that this is an area on which they have been working, though I still think they have a ways to go.  The current system, which I never would have found had they not explained it, is to exit the game, "go to Game Manager, select the game, go to Pitch by Pitch, and you can edit any pitch."  That is really cumbersome.  There should be a way to do this from the main screen.  Fortunately, the developers indicated that this is something they are hoping to improve upon soon.

I also criticized them on the price.  They told me that they felt $9.99 was fair and consistent with the market, and they are probably right.  My main criticism was with the price of all the extras.  As they mentioned, however, those are all extra features and none of them are required to enjoy the app or score a game (though that MLB roster plugin sure is handy).    Here is what Faster Than Monkeys had to say about the cost of their add-ons:

The Admin Website IS free (Options->Admin Website). The Team Website is an add on, but does not offer any more in depth details than is available from the application itself. All statistics from the application can be emailed or viewed in app for detailed analysis (Game Manager has email options for CSV, HTML, Excel, and PDF. Team Manager has cumulative statistics emailable.) What the Team Website offers is convenience of keeping a hosted website, mostly for youth teams which they do anyway, that is automatically updated at the click of a button, and provides other features that sites likeeteamz.com and others provide. It adds an editable home page for a team, a place to upload pictures, calendar functionality for scheduling practices, etc, PLUS the convenience of one click stat updates (every time you export, the site is automatically updated). The $19.99 fee for that is less than it generally costs for teams to buy just a generic hosting account for a year, and this one includes huge time saving features.

One thing I really think Faster Than Monkeys got right with this one is taking what can be an extremely complex task of scoring a baseball game, and making it extremely easy to do.  You do not need to know any complex codes or symbols.  Just tap where the balls and runners go.  That is what makes it a great app for even the first time Little League team manager to use.]

ESPN iScore Baseball is available from the iTunes App Store for iPhone, iPod Touch, or iPad.  It costs $9.99, but additional fees are required for certain features.

What I Liked:

• Easy interface
• Complete scoring
• Complete batting, pitching, and hitting stats
• Substitutions on the fly
• ESPN
• MLB rosters
• admin web pages with complete stats

What Needs Improvement:

• Substitutions do not always work properly
• No way to correct a mistake
• Price (at least toss in one admin webpage free)
• Pitch counter shows pitcher or catcher view, but not batter

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