With one week to go before the 2010 MLB season opens up I thought I’d give a quick list of some of the cooler and more useful baseball apps for iPods and iPhones. I suppose I could list apps for androids and blackberrys and all that, but I don’t have either and so that would be of no benefit to me. And, as we all know, I am the only person that I care about.
SO! What sort of things to people do at baseball games? Drink until they’re brave enough to yell shit at people twice their size; eat a meal of hot dogs, popcorn and soda that costs more than most surf and turf platters; and, if you’re a huge nerd or over 70 years old you keep score. Now, there are a bunch of scoring apps, but only one seems to have the delightful combination of being free and not crappy. That would be (heads up, clicking the links for apps will also open iTunes for most of you guys) ScorePad Baseball Free.
It has a cool looking interface, and it can be filled in with custom lineups for use with MLB games or baseball of any level. This will make calculating little Johnny’s VORP all the easier (the first step is identifying the right fielder as the replacement level player).
The next apps you need to have for the baseball season are MLB.com At Bat or MLB.com At Bat Lite. If you are familiar with mlb.com’s gameday and mlb.tv then you’ll know what you’re getting in these apps. The full version is $14.99, but if you have an iPhone and a mlb.tv account you’ll probably find it to be well worth the price. It can be used in conjunction with an MLB.tv account to watch live games anywhere.
The lite version is still pretty great. It is far less impressive than watching live baseball while driving, shaving, or operating a crane, but it still gives you pitch by pitch live, including pitch types and location and up the the minute scoring. And, like its genetic brother gameday, the lite version will provide video highlights for various games as they pop up. For a free baseball app it can not be beat.
Finally, I have an app that just premiered earlier this week. Batting Goggles is an app put out by the wonderfully titled blog Sabometrics. Being that I own an iPod and not an iPhone my favorite part about Batting Goggles is that it does not require a live internet connection to work, so I can use it anywhere. The app allows you to look up hot and cold zones for every batter and pitcher in baseball, showing by location (both inside and out of the strikezone) how well that player performs in and what their sample size is.
The stats can be broken down into splits and totals, showing batting average and slugging percentage, and by clicking on a location the number of balls in play from that zone is revealed. Batting Goggles isn’t free, but ninety-nine cents is a great value. [familyguyjoke] I haven’t seen a better value since before inflation hit the prostitution business. [/familyguyjoke]
If you have any other awesome sports applications leave a comment so I can check it out!
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