How a game day works
Next Inning runs the fielding rotation and the pitch counts. GameChanger still keeps the score and the batting order. Ten minutes of reading covers everything a coach does with it.
Get set up once
- Sign in at diamondmapper.com with the email your manager invited, or enter the team code from the “No team yet” screen and wait for the approval.
- Add it to your home screen. On an iPhone, tap the share button in Safari and choose Add to Home Screen. On Android, use the browser menu. It opens like an app and works with no signal.
- Put your name on it. Tap the person icon in the header and fill in a display name, so the other coaches see “Coach Joe” instead of your email.
Before the game: check-in
- Tap Start a new game on the Game tab, then mark who is here. “Same as last game” copies the last attendance. Add games enters the next few dates ahead of time; they wait under Upcoming, and on the day the big button opens that game instead of making a second one.
- Pick the opponent from your league and tap Home or Away. When both teams are in the league, that is one game for the league: one clock for both dugouts, and each side sees the other’s pitch counts at the end. If the other manager set the game up first, it is already on your Game tab under Upcoming.
- Say by which inning everyone should be covered. In a division where a coach may catch, say whether a player is catching today; elsewhere a player always does and the app never asks.
- Practice or test game marks a scrimmage or a dry run. Only your team’s coaches see it, and it counts in no season total, rest day, league record or season link. Use one to practice a hand-off before opening day.
- Plan pitchers and catchers ahead for each inning. It is optional, but with a plan the engine schedules everyone’s bench and outfield innings around it instead of warning you inning by inning.
- Preview the game shows where everyone plays and sits for the whole game, so you can answer a parent before the first pitch.
- A player who cannot pitch today because of rest days is marked right on the list.
Each inning: the lineup
- Pick the pitcher and catcher. The engine fills the other spots so that everyone gets infield and outfield time and nobody sits twice before everyone has sat once. The spots rotate too: nobody stands in the same outfield spot, or at second, short or third, two innings running, and a spot repeats in a game only when there is no other way. First base stays with the players cleared for it.
- Tap two players to swap them. Tap one and choose Lock here to keep that player in place when you shuffle.
- A red note means the lineup breaks a league rule. You can start anyway as the manager, and it goes in the log.
- Start inning puts it on the field. Start inning 1 also starts the game clock, and says so.
During the inning
- Count pitches either way: tap +1 pitch for every pitch, or let GameChanger keep it and type each pitcher’s total when you tap End inning. The bar shows how many are left today and the note tells you when to get the next pitcher ready. Enter count corrects a total mid-inning; one tap too many is one Undo.
- + Hit batter and + Walk keep the league’s limits. Pitcher event is for a change on the mound: reached the limit, hit too many batters, the league’s straight-walk limit, or your own call. Changing pitchers asks for the outgoing pitcher’s total on the spot.
- Change catcher works the same way, mid-inning. Said “coach catches” at check-in and a player can catch after all? Tap A player catches next to the catcher line, or the Catcher box when you set the next inning, and pick anyone: a player catches from then on.
- Player left and Player arrived fix the field on the spot and tell you who moved where.
- The clock starts when you tap Start inning 1. From then on the clock line gives the league’s limits as times off your watch: no new inning after 7:17, game ends 7:32. If the game really began earlier, tap Wrong time? under it and type when it started. In a league game the clock is shared: whichever dugout starts inning 1 first starts it for both, and a correction applies to both.
- Read-out view is big type for calling the lineup out; Share lineup sends it to your coaches chat in one tap.
Mistakes: undo and the log
- The Undo button at the top names the last change and takes it out. Tapped hit batter twice? Undo, done.
- Log lists every change, newest first, with who made it. Any recent entry can be undone from there: a tally on its own, anything bigger together with what came after it.
- Nothing is ever hidden. Every override and every undo stays in the log, and the league’s season check reads it.
One phone runs the game
- Whoever starts the game runs it. Every other coach sees it live but cannot change it, so two people never count the same pitch.
- Hand off gives it to a named coach; Take over takes it when the coach running it has left or asked you to.
- Out of signal? Keep going. Everything saves on your phone and syncs when you are back. If two phones counted the same inning while apart, the app says so and the log shows both.
End of game
- End inning, check the pitch totals against GameChanger, then set the next lineup or end the game. A full game is what the league says; the coaches may agree to end sooner.
- The final screen shows innings by player, the pitch counts with the rest days they mean, and any rule that was not met. Share game summary sends it to the chat.
- In a league game, the final screen also shows the other team’s pitch counts once they finish. Acknowledge them the way you would sign their pitching sheet; the league sees which games both sides acknowledged.
- Reopen a game if it ended by mistake.
Parents: the season link
The manager turns on the season link from the Team tab and sends it to the parents once. It shows the lineup as each inning is set, the last game and the next dates, for every real game all season, with no sign-in and nothing beyond the roster names. Practice games never appear on it. A new link makes the old one stop working.
The Season tab
Innings and sits for the season, who can pitch on a given date, and the same season check your league admin sees. The division’s rules open from the Team tab; a manager cannot loosen them.