FREE BASEBALL5 COACHING TOOLS

SLAP RUBBER is proud to announce that we now have free coaching tools to share with the Baseball5 Community! The tools are developed to easily give you access to the same tools described in “A Runner on 2B is not in Scoring Position…” & “Who’s Up?“, the two books on data-driven offensive and defensive strategy by Philip Spielmann, the Head Coach of the Danish Baseball5 National Team.

The tools are improved and more user friendly versions of the same tools used by Philip Spielmann in his own coaching and for the research for his books.

THE B5 STAT-TRACKER

This Baseball5 coaching tool is made to be an easy tracker for play-by-plays with hitting directional data included. This is what sets this tool apart from other apps for tracking games. The tool is developed for fast and easy tracking, which allows for the tool to be used from your smartphone during the game. This tool is great for the assistant coach, the injured player on the bench or anyone in your coaching staff that can be allocated to track games live as you play.

The B5 Stat-Tracker in action with it’s hitting direction zones you simply click to indicate where the hit was directed to.
The B5 Stat-Tracker has easy to use buttons for quick tracking of the game.

Completed games are stored locally in the app (session based), but can also be synced to your Google Sheets document for later use. But the local storage is more than enough for you to be able to review the stats from your game between sets or in the evening after a day of fierce games. You can also use the tracker as a scouting tool while watching your next opponent play in games before you meet them: The B5 Stat-Tracker will show you the individual players preferred hitting direction, the teams overall preferred hitting directions in all 24 Base/out states of the game, which will prepare your team for what’s coming.

Export and Sync your game data to your Google Sheets Document

THE LINEUP ARCHITETC

A strong and important Baseball5 coaching tool to use in combination with the B5 Stat-Tracker: The Lineup Architect app uses your data that you have synced from the B5 Stat-Tracker to your Google Sheets Document. The total data you have collected from all the completed games you have tracked can be uploaded to the Lineup Architect.

The uploaded data is then used in the Lineup Assessment Tool which will give you an analysis of all players in your data and show their OBP weighted to their theoretical performance had they been hitting as first, second, third, fourth or fifth in the lineup respectively. This is a powerful tool to get real practical insights on your hitters performance. Why should your hitter be third in the lineup, if they hit effectively in the situations that the leadoff encounters most throughout the game?

The Lineup Assessment Tool from “Who’s Up” by Philip Spielmann

As a bonus, the Lineup Architect also shows you the same calculations but with the value of your hitters RBI/AB. This is the statistical value that will tell you in which position of the lineup they would historically be most efficient in driving in runs. As proposed in “Who’s Up?“; if you have a hard time finding a position in the lineup that plays to the hitters OBP maybe look towards placing the hitter in a spot that increases your run production.

The RBI/AB Stats for the Belgian team at the 2023 European Championship, per each hitter weighted to their theoretical performance as 4th and 5th in the lineup.

SUPPORT MY WORK

Both tools are free to use for all coaches and players in the Baseball5 community. Running and maintaining these tools does however come with a bit of a financial cost to me, so I’ll encourage you to support me with whatever you find appropriate by becoming a patron. There are 3 tiers on my Patron page; 5$/month, 10$/month and 20$/month. The Patrons get access to some extra stuff. You can read more about it here

So yeah, use the tools for free or donate by becoming a Patron – and then in return you get more cool stuff. What’s not to like?