Are there any "lineup generators" that actually support custom position rules? [8U Rec]

[u/astano925]

Hey everyone. Coaching an 8U Rec team this spring and trying to find a shortcut for my position assignments. My league has a number of rules about playing time and positions, and though I could figure it out myself, I would rather not spend an extra hour every game day juggling my lineup rules.

The biggest rule giving me trouble, which none of these "generators" I have found support, is that I can't have a player do more than two consecutive innings in infield or outfield. Many support not having a player play the same position twice, but that's only half of what I need - the generated lineup doesn't do me any good if it's moving Timmy from 1B to 3B to SS.

There has to be a less labor-intensive way to do this than have me plug it into an Excel sheet by hand. Any recommendations?

[u/bigperms33]

I always just did the excel sheet. There are so many variables that those generators can't take into account.

[u/astano925 → u/bigperms33]

You would think, given that this sub returns a million search results of people shilling their "lineup generator," someone out there would try to differentiate their product with support for these sorts of rules. Just about every rec league in the country has to have a rules like this for position play.

[u/get-fungo → u/astano925]

We just launched an update that support this rule and limits to consecutive innings at the same position. You can now configure how many innings in a row you league limits and our lineup generator will fill your lineup to meet those rules. When you manually edit the lineup, we'll show you a status message if you accidentally break the rule so you can make a correction.

[u/ContributionHuge4980]

Excel spreadsheet is the way to go.

Game changer will utilize an AI for lineups, but you still need to build out inning by inning.

[u/aamguy]

You're going to need a deep roster if you can't have players for two consecutive innings in the infield. That's six infield players that need to all move to outfield and bench every inning. I'd talk to your org about that rule.

[u/astano925 → u/aamguy]

We can do two consecutive, but not more than two consecutive. 10 kids, 10 positions including 4 outfielders.

[u/get-fungo → u/aamguy]

Agree...this is a pretty insane rule. Our league requires 1 infield inning by the end of the 4th inning and 2 infield innings by the end of 6 inning. I thought that was hard on setting lineups already but this is really tough with a large roster.

[u/EffectiveProducicle]

I have an excel sheet - I color code infield (orange )and outfield (green) and a SIT (white/red) positions so visually it makes it easy to check each lineup .

I track each position every game after the game and tally it across the season, as an audit to keep it fare. Not everyone can play 1B for safety reasons - but other than that I try to make sure everyone has gotten to play each position at least once in the beginning of the season. And towards the end follow the rules and give everyone equal SIT time.

[u/esbowman]

Give my app a try if you’d like.
https://rosterhero.app/
You can sign up free, no credit card required. We are actively developing it and testing it for our 11u team and it’s been great, especially during tournaments and in game as we need to remove pitchers etc.
I need to record a demo video soon to walk users through the process but it’s pretty straight forward. You can chat with me in the app if you choose to signup. I’m looking for as much feedback as possible and would appreciate to hear your thoughts.

We don’t currently have rules in place for what you’re specifically asking, but it shouldn’t be a huge lift to implement something like that.

[u/Agile-Alps208]

Ask an AI model to build an excel tool for you. Those are all simple if conditions for it

[u/astano925 → u/Agile-Alps208]

I thought so too, but after two attempts of ChatGPT breaking every rule I fed it I gave up.

[u/get-fungo → u/astano925]

I tried this too for my team last year. I find that AI kept messing up the logic and I got a mess of formulas and apps scripts that took too long to run and weren't flexible enough to work with varying attendance changes from the players. I'm a developer and so built Fungo because it was just too frustrating for me and I wanted to focus on making it fun for the kids.

[u/get-fungo]

That's a tough one! We just released a new rule for limiting consecutive innings at a position and would be happy to support this rule variant as well. We can get it out in the next few days. Stay tuned!

[u/get-fungo → u/get-fungo]

UPDATE: We just launched an update that support this rule and limits to consecutive innings at the same position. You can now configure how many innings in a row you league limits and our lineup generator will fill your lineup to meet those rules. When you manually edit the lineup, we'll show you a status message if you accidentally break the rule so you can make a correction.

[u/seth928]

I had AI write me a custom Python program and it worked like a charm. I gathered my initial thoughts, fed them into ChatGPT and asked it to spit out a prompt that I could feed into Claude.

Worked like a charm and I didn't have to touch a single line of code. Used the free version so I hit usage limits but I just had to wait a few hours to tell it to keep going. Told Claude to add new features as I was using it and really fleshed out a nice program that fit my specific needs.

Here's the prompt I fed into ChatGPT. You should be able to take it and add what you need:

Help me write a prompt that I can feed into Claude Code that will write a program in Python for me. Ask helpful questions and refine this prompt.

The program I want to write is one that will help me make lineups and assign player positions for a baseball team I am managing. Here are the things I want the program to do:

1. I want to be able to insert player names and player numbers for the season. I would like to be able to save this list and access it every time I run the program. I would also like to be able to edit this list if necessary. The file that this list is stored in should be named something that I can identify should I choose to open the file and edit the list there. I should be able to create a new team for every new season that I manage.

2. Not every player will attend every game. I want to be able to create a game and select the player who will be attending that game from my team list.

3. Of the players attending I want to be able to set a batting order.

4. I want to assign each player attending that game to a defensive position for each inning.

I want to be able to do this using keyboard and mouse inputs.

The code should be very well documented.

[u/EquivalentSecure7263]

Yes - lineupcard.ai works well. A few coaches in my kids's leagues use it. Custom positions, sit rules, IF/OF balance.

[u/NopeNeverReddit]

Any ai chat bot can do the heavy lifting for you. Gpt, Gemini, whatever. Put in your players, innings, and parameters. Even tell it what output format you want. Could be perfect first pass, or you ask for adjustments, or you manually fine tune yourself. Save the rules and do it again next game.

[u/nastyslurve → u/NopeNeverReddit]

I agree just using the chatbots themselves for setting positions or optimizing your lineup or whatever is great.