#98---TOR @ NYA, 4/6/2015

Last year’s Opening Day game for the Blue Jays and Yankees marked the first game for Didi Gregorius as Derek Jeter’s replacement and the major league debuts of Deveon Travis (an impressive two walks and a homer) and Miguel Castro (who retired all three Yankees he faced and got out of the eighth when Gregorius, clearly cracking under the pressure of replacing His Holiness, was inexplicably caught stealing third with runners on first & second, two outs, and the Bombers down five runs).

A-Rod also returned from his inane suspension with a single and a walk, while the Jays got to Masahiro Tanaka for five runs in the third, capped by a two-run shot by Edwin Encarnacion.

I don’t think there are any new notations here, but I will draw your attention to how I indicate shifts, which obviously are a bigger factor now than before. I have no way of marking a shift unless an out is recorded; even if I wanted to clutter my scoresheet with that information, it would only be possible when at the park. Most telecasts are too busy showing moron fans to bother with trivialities like where the fielders are positioned.

But if the fielder makes a play outside of his normal position, I mark it with subscript. So on Navarro’s groundout in the third, Gregorius (the shortstop, 6) made the play up the middle, but on the shortstop’s side of the bag (64). Headley’s groundout in the fourth came as Travis was positioned in shallow right-center (98S).

Or as I put it in a blog comment:

From the perspective of a “pleasure scorekeeper”, I don’t endeavor to record zones to the level that a Project Scoresheet-style scorekeeper would. I use a subscript if the fielder who makes the play is significantly removed from his normal position. 4(9S)3, where the 9S is actually written in subscript between the 4 and the 3, would indicate a 43 putout in which the second baseman fields the ball in shallow right. Similarily, 6(46)3 would be a 63 in which the shortstop fields the ball on the second base side of the bag, but not in the standard second base zone--that would be 6(4)3.

I divide the outfield into 7l, 7, 78, 87, 8, 89, 98, 9, and 9l, which I would also use for a groundball hit through the infield regardless of whether it might have been hit at the fielder’s normal position. So a single through the vacated third base position would probably just be a -7l or a -7 (line below the 7 to indicate a groundball).

The distinction between the zones and the “standard” fielder positions is all just on what it looks or feels like to me, so obviously this approach is not suited for collecting data for analytical purposes. But as a relatively simple and space-conserving way in which to reflect some of this information on a traditional scoresheet, I find it satisfactory.

#97---CHA @ TOR, 6/28/2014

After finally taking the plunge to track the score of the game in-progress, I applied the same basic approach to tracking all of the summary statistics. Previously I displayed these for each inning as R-H-W-LOB; to save space I now smashed them all together, so that 1201 was 1 run, 2 hits, 0 walks, 1 left. If the running total changed from the previous inning (i.e. if the line for the inning was anything other than 0000), then the new total was listed to the right, as you can see for the Blue Jays’ second. If the values ever cease being single digits (which did not happen in this game, but often do; obviously 10+ hits in a game is not a particularly rare event), then I break it into two lines, with runs and hits on top, walks and LOB on the bottom. The final tally for the game, from whatever inning it was reached, is boxed in at the end of the game.

Early in this game, only the totals in Toronto’s boxes were doing much changing, thanks to a 2-run fifth inning homer by Darrin Mastroianni (these were not your 2015 Blue Jays, as the lineup presence of Glenn and Tolleson also suggest). Marcus Stroman was pitching great into the seventh, recording the first two outs before surrendering a double to would-be Rookie of the Year Jose Abreu and walking Adam Dunn (one of my favorites who had a great game in this his final season, singling, doubling, and drawing two walks, yet also inexplicably getting caught stealing to end the fifth--the only time he was caught this season, and one of just two attempts). Dustin McGowan was summoned, and promptly served up the lead as Dayan Viciedo hit a three-run bomb. In the eighth, McGowan had his own two-out trouble, with Adam Eaton singling to first base and Gordon Beckham following with a single. Aaron Loup surrendered a single to Connor Gillaspie and the White Sox had a 4-2 lead. Toronto quickly scored with a double and single to start the ninth, but could do nothing more.

#96---PHI @ CIN, 4/15/2013

One thing that I have always had trouble keeping in mind about scorekeeping is that “score” is prominently included in the name. I have always been so focused on recording the minutia of the play on the field that the score of the game has often been afterthought. Of course, part of recording the play on the field is marking when runs are scored, and I have never had any trouble doing that. However, I have often eschewed any sort of summary of the game in progress. Some of the earliest examples with the scoresheet I’ve basically been using since 1998 don’t even include the final score of the game. I knew it at the time, and figured that if I were ever interested in revisiting it, I could just tally up the runs then.

Eventually I made a point of recording the final score of each game (which also made it easy to spot scoresheets that showed the first nine innings of an extra-inning affair, since they had no final score), but it wasn’t until 2013 that I bothered to record a running tally of the score as the game progresses, which you can see in this example. The 2, enclosed with a box, at the end of the Reds’ seventh inning line indicates their total score at this point was 2. When they added another pair in the eighth, this became a 4. I only recorded this running score if it changed, which cuts down on excess writing but sometimes requires a look back through the previous inning summaries.

This was a good game; through 6.5 innings both Bronson Arroyo and Cliff Lee had three-hit their opponents. But in the Cincinnati seventh Votto singled, Phillips doubled, Votto scored on a wild pitch that also moved Phillips to third, Bruce walked, and Frazier hit a sac fly. But Philadelphia would tie it on Chase Utley’s two-out, two-run pinch hit homer in the eighth. But Jerry Horst allowed two hits, then intentionally walked Joey Votto as Mike Adams was summoned with only one out. Brandon Phillips singled in two runs on a 1-2 pitch, and Aroldis Chapman mowed down the Phillies in the ninth. The final was 4-2, and you could actually finally follow the progress towards it on my scoresheet.

Note Chris Heisey's 7th inning PA, in which he reached on a throwing error by the pitcher. The "-->2" under the "TE1" indicates that the errant throw was directed to second base. Otherwise, in lieu of any notation, it would be assumed to have been made in an attempt to retire Heisey, the batter-runner.

#95---KC @ LAA, 4/6/2012

This was the last game I watched during an opening day binge in 2012, and it was a simpler time. The Royals lineup has many names that were familiar during the 2014-2015 dystopian postseasons, but they weren’t very good yet and Bruce Chen was their opening day starter. Well, the latter may be different from the current reality in name only. Their opponent was the Angels, sans Mike Trout, who would not be recalled until later in the spring. But Jered Weaver cruised, giving up four hits, no walks, fanning ten, and making just 97 pitches over eight shutout innings. KC kept it close until the first four Angels singled in the eighth and Erick Aybar hit a bases-clearing triple. This was also Albert Pujols’ first game for LAA, lining into a DP, popping up, fanning, and being intentionally walked.

It doesn’t look as if any new notations showed up in my scoresheet. However, Betancourt's at-bat in the seventh featured a rate play for which you can see my scoring. He fouled off the sixth pitch, and noted fielding whiz Mark Trumbo muffed in foul territory. I note this by bracketing [CE5] after the regular notation ("F") for that foul ball (F because it was the sixth pitch). There's no need to note that the error occurred in foul territory because the context makes it clear.