How to Score Baseball

Hits

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Hits#

A hit is the most fundamental positive outcome in baseball. The batter put the ball in play, the defense couldn’t retire them, and they’ve reached base safely with no error involved. Hits come in four varieties depending on how far the batter advances, and each has its own notation.

The Four Hit Types#

Single (1B)#

The batter reaches first base on a fair ball. Write 1B in the cell (some scorekeepers just draw the line to first without any abbreviation — both are fine).

Notation Cheat Sheet

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Notation Cheat Sheet#

This is the page to bookmark. Every notation used in baseball scoring, organized by category, with the color each one appears in BaseballScorer. Print it, screenshot it, or just keep this tab open while you score.

If you want deeper explanations of any category, the links below each section point to the full documentation.

Hits#

Hits are recorded in green — the batter reached base safely.

Notation	Meaning
`1B`	Single
`2B`	Double
`3B`	Triple
`HR`	Home run

A home run with runners on base gets additional runner notation. A solo shot is just HR. See recording hits for how to handle each type.

Pitch Tracking

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Pitch Tracking#

Most casual scorers skip pitch tracking entirely, and that’s fine — you can run a complete scorecard without recording a single pitch. But once you start tracking pitches, you’ll wonder why you ever stopped. Pitch counts tell you when a starter is getting tired. Sequences reveal what a pitcher is throwing in hitter’s counts. And at the end of a game, the full pitch log is the richest storytelling layer your scorecard has.

Reading the Grid

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Reading the Grid#

The baseball scorecard looks intimidating the first time you see it — a dense grid of boxes covered in numbers, letters, and cryptic symbols. But the underlying structure is simple and logical once you know the key. Every box in that grid tells the story of one at-bat, and together they tell the story of the whole game.

The Basic Layout#

The scorecard grid works like a spreadsheet with baseball rules:

Scoring Along with Live MLB Games

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Scoring Along with Live MLB Games#

One of the best ways to practice scorecard keeping is to score a real game as it happens. You follow along with the broadcast, record each pitch and play, and end up with a complete record of everything that happened. It’s deeply satisfying — and it sharpens your eye for the game in ways that just watching never does.

BaseballScorer connects directly to MLB’s live data feed, which opens up a few capabilities that paper scorecards can’t offer: automatic catch-up when you fall behind, and reconciliation that checks your scoring against the official record.

Stolen Bases

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Stolen Bases#

A stolen base is one of the most exciting plays in baseball — a runner taking a base entirely through his own speed and instinct, with no help from the batter. Scoring it is straightforward once you know the notation, and it’s one of the few events in a game that happens completely between pitches, independent of the at-bat in progress.

What Counts as a Stolen Base#

A stolen base (SB) is credited when a runner advances to the next base without the benefit of a hit, walk, error, or balk — and without the batter helping by putting the ball in play. The runner simply goes, and if he’s safe, it’s a stolen base.

Substitutions

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Substitutions#

Baseball is famously a game of no ties and no clocks — but it is also, uniquely, a game of no take-backs. Once a player enters the game, they’re in for good. The lineup card submitted to the umpire before the first pitch is a binding contract, and every substitution you make is permanent. That makes substitution management one of the most consequential decisions a manager makes, and it’s something scorekeepers need to capture carefully.

Why Keep Score?

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Why Keep Score?#

Baseball has been recorded on paper longer than almost any other sport. Before radio, before television, before the internet, there were scorecards. Fans in the grandstands kept their own tallies. Newspapers published box scores the next morning. Official scorers tracked every pitch and play for the historical record. That tradition hasn’t faded — if anything, it’s stronger among fans who want a deeper connection to the game.

Auto-Fill from the MLB Live Feed

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Auto-Fill from the MLB Live Feed#

Auto-fill is BaseballScorer’s way of helping you keep up when the game moves faster than your pen. Connected to MLB’s live data feed, the app can fill in the result of any at-bat it has data for — the outcome, fielding sequence, RBIs, and runner movements — instantly and accurately.

What Gets Auto-Filled#

When BaseballScorer auto-fills an at-bat, it populates:

The outcome — hit type (single, double, etc.), out type (groundout, flyout, strikeout), walk, error, fielder’s choice
The fielding sequence — which fielders handled the ball (e.g., 6-3 for shortstop to first base)
RBIs — any runs driven in on the play
Runner movements — which baserunners advanced or scored, and how

What it does not fill in:

BaseballScorer Color Guide

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

BaseballScorer Color Guide#

Color is one of the fastest ways to read a scorecard. A quick glance at the green and red on a card tells you whether the inning was productive or the pitcher was dominant. BaseballScorer uses a consistent, intentional color system throughout — buttons, pitch dots, card backgrounds, and the diamond all follow the same logic.

Here’s what every color means and where you’ll see it.

The Core Principle#

Green = positive for the offense. Red = negative for the offense.

Pitching Changes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Pitching Changes#

Pitching changes are among the most common interruptions in a baseball game, especially late in close contests. Relief pitchers enter with the game on the line, and the scorecard needs to reflect exactly when each pitcher was in, how many batters they faced, and what happened on their watch.

When Pitching Changes Happen#

The starting pitcher doesn’t always finish. A manager might pull the starter after a rocky inning, or after a set number of pitches, or in the middle of an at-bat to gain a platoon advantage. In modern baseball, it’s not unusual to see three or four pitchers in a single game — sometimes more.

The Ball-Strike Count

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Ball-Strike Count#

Every at-bat in baseball has a count — two numbers that tell you exactly where things stand between pitcher and batter. The count is always expressed as balls first, strikes second: a “2-1 count” means two balls and one strike. If you hear a broadcaster say “he’s behind in the count,” it means the batter has more strikes than balls, and the pitcher has the advantage.

Understanding the count is essential for scoring, because most at-bat outcomes are defined by what happens when the count reaches its limits.

The Mini Diamond

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Mini Diamond#

Every cell on a baseball scorecard contains a small diamond — four bases arranged in a square, rotated 45 degrees. It’s tiny, but it’s the heart of the scorecard. The mini diamond shows exactly where a batter went after reaching base, which bases they touched, and whether they scored.

Once you know how to read it, the mini diamond lets you reconstruct the baserunning story of any at-bat at a glance.

The Scorecard

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Scorecard#

A baseball scorecard is a grid. Rows are batters; columns are innings. Every cell in that grid represents one plate appearance — one batter, one inning. By the time the game ends, you’ve filled in a compact, readable history of everything that happened.

That’s the whole structure. Everything else is just notation inside those cells.

The Layout#

The Lineup Column#

The leftmost column lists the batting order: nine rows, one per lineup spot. You write the player’s name (or number, or abbreviation — whatever works for you) and their position.

Wild Pitches and Passed Balls

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Wild Pitches and Passed Balls#

Wild pitches and passed balls are two different ways a pitch can get away from the battery — the pitcher-catcher tandem — allowing baserunners to advance. They happen mid-at-bat, between pitches, completely independently of the batter. Knowing the difference between them, and how to record each, is one of the finer points of keeping a complete scorecard.

Wild Pitch (WP)#

A wild pitch is the pitcher’s fault. The pitch was thrown so far out of the zone — too high, too low, too far outside — that a catcher making a reasonable effort could not have stopped it. The ball gets by, and any runners on base can advance.

Challenges

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Challenges#

Instant replay came to MLB in 2008 for home run calls, and expanded to most reviewable plays in 2014. Today, each manager gets one challenge per game (teams keep their challenge if the call is overturned). Umpires can also initiate reviews on their own for certain plays. It doesn’t happen on every play, but when it does, you need to note it on the scorecard.

How MLB Replay Review Works#

When a manager disagrees with a call — typically a safe/out call at a base, a catch/trap call in the outfield, or a fair/foul boundary — they can request a review. Play stops, the call goes to the Replay Operations Center in New York, and umpires review the video. The result is one of two outcomes:

Fielder Position Numbers

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fielder Position Numbers#

Every position on the baseball field has a number. These numbers are the backbone of scoring notation — when you write “6-3” on a scorecard, you’re saying the shortstop (6) threw the ball to the first baseman (3) for the out. If you don’t know the numbers, the notation is just hieroglyphics. So let’s fix that.

The Nine Positions#

Here’s the standard numbering, starting from the pitcher and working outward:

Ground Outs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ground Outs#

The ground out is the most common play in baseball. Batter hits a grounder, an infielder scoops it up, throws to first, and the batter is out. It happens dozens of times per game, so you’ll want this notation in your muscle memory fast.

The Notation#

A ground out is written as the fielder numbers separated by dashes, in the order the ball was handled:

6-3 — Shortstop fielded, threw to first baseman.

Practice Mode: Learn by Doing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Practice Mode: Learn by Doing#

Reading about baseball scoring is one thing. Actually doing it — deciding which button to tap for a 6-3 groundout, figuring out where to log a stolen base — is something else entirely. The gap between understanding the rules and developing the muscle memory to score confidently takes practice.

BaseballScorer’s practice mode closes that gap by walking you through a real MLB game, one play at a time, with guidance at every step.

Tag Ups

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Tag Ups#

The tag-up rule is one of those baseball rules that sounds complicated but makes intuitive sense once you see it in action. When a fly ball is caught for an out, runners don’t have to stay frozen — they can advance, as long as they first return to (or remain touching) the base they were on when the ball was caught. That act of returning to the base before advancing is the “tag up.”

The Line Score

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Line Score#

If the scorecard grid is the detailed record of a game, the line score is the summary you’d read aloud on the radio. It tells you, inning by inning, how many runs each team scored — plus the final totals for runs, hits, and errors. It’s the most compact complete picture of a baseball game you can fit on one line.

The Format#

A standard line score looks like this:

Fixing Mistakes

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fixing Mistakes#

Every scorekeeper makes mistakes. You record a groundout when it was a lineout. You put the wrong fielder number. You forget to mark an RBI. A pitch gets recorded on the wrong count. These things happen, and a good scoring system makes them easy to fix.

On a paper scorecard, corrections mean erasing, crossing out, or writing in margins with arrows — a mess that makes the card harder to read later. A digital scorer can do better.

Fly Outs

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fly Outs#

Not every out is a grounder. When a batter hits the ball in the air and a fielder catches it before it touches the ground, it’s a fly out — and the notation tells you both what kind of fly ball it was and who caught it.

The Notation#

Fly ball outs use a letter prefix followed by the fielder’s number:

F — fly ball (a routine fly out)
L — line drive caught on the fly
FF — foul fly (a pop-up caught in foul territory)
P or IF — infield pop-up (some scorekeepers use this instead of F for short pop-ups)

Examples:

Printing Your Scorecard

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Printing Your Scorecard#

A completed scorecard is worth keeping. Whether you’re a parent saving a record of your kid’s game, a stat-keeper archiving a season, or just someone who likes a tangible record, printing gives you something you can file, frame, or hand off.

BaseballScorer produces a print-ready scorecard layout directly from the app — no export, no desktop software required.

The Print Layout#

The printout is formatted for landscape US Letter (11" × 8.5"). Landscape orientation gives the inning columns room to breathe — portrait would squeeze the grid too tightly to be readable.

Rulesets: Scoring Different Leagues

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Rulesets: Scoring Different Leagues#

Baseball isn’t one game. A Little League game in your town and a World Series game at Dodger Stadium share the same basic DNA, but the rules around innings, lineups, designated hitters, and extra-inning tiebreakers vary significantly. If you’re scoring your kid’s rec-league game, you don’t want MLB settings — and if you’re scoring a postseason game, you don’t want the ghost runner showing up in the 10th.

Scoring Notation

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Scoring Notation#

Baseball scoring notation is a shorthand for recording what happened during every at-bat. It’s compact, standardized (mostly), and once you learn it, you can reconstruct an entire game from a single sheet of paper. Or, in our case, from a single screen.

The Basics#

Every at-bat gets a notation that tells you the result. The notation system uses three main elements:

Fielder numbers (1-9) to identify who handled the ball
Letter codes for the type of play (F for fly, L for line drive, K for strikeout, etc.)
Suffixes for modifiers (DP for double play, U for unassisted)

If you don’t know the fielder numbers yet, read Fielder Position Numbers first — the notation won’t make sense without them.

The Ghost Runner

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The Ghost Runner#

Since 2020, Major League Baseball has used an automatic runner rule in extra innings: at the start of each extra-innings half-inning, a runner is automatically placed on second base. No one hit their way on. No one walked. The runner just appears. Fans and scorers have taken to calling this the ghost runner.

The rule exists to keep extra-inning games from turning into four-hour endurance tests. It creates immediate scoring pressure: every half-inning beyond the ninth starts with a runner in scoring position and nobody out. Teams adjusted their strategy quickly — sacrifice bunts and squeeze plays made a comeback almost overnight.

Ending the Game

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Ending the Game#

Most baseball games end the same way: nine innings, three outs per half, and the team with more runs wins. But baseball has enough edge cases around game endings that it’s worth knowing them — especially since they affect how you close out your scorecard.

Regulation Games#

A standard game is nine innings. Each team gets three outs per half-inning. After the top of the ninth, if the visiting team leads, the home team gets their final three outs. If the home team leads after the top of the ninth, or ties it, they bat in the bottom half.

Strikeouts

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Strikeouts#

The strikeout is baseball’s most symbolic out. Three strikes and you’re done — but how you got there matters enough to record differently depending on whether the batter went down swinging or stood there watching strike three go past.

K and Kc#

K is the universal symbol for a strikeout. It dates to the 1860s, when Henry Chadwick (the father of baseball statistics) chose K because “struck” — the root of “strikeout” — ends in K. S was already taken for sacrifice.

Walks and Hit by Pitch

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Walks and Hit by Pitch#

Three different outcomes, one common result: the batter takes first base. Walks and hit by pitches are all counted as times on base and count against the pitcher’s totals, but they’re recorded distinctly because they got there by different means.

BB — Base on Balls (Walk)#

Four balls before a third strike, and the batter walks to first. Write BB in the cell.

On the mini diamond, draw a line from home plate to first base — the same as a single. The batter is on base, the pitch count was 4-0 (or some count that reached four balls), and the pitcher fell behind badly enough that the batter never had to swing.

Errors

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Errors#

An error is the official scorer’s judgment that a fielder failed to make a play they should have made with ordinary effort — and that failure allowed the batter or a runner to reach base (or advance) when they otherwise wouldn’t have.

Write E followed by the fielder’s number:

E6 — error by the shortstop
E4 — error by the second baseman
E8 — error by the center fielder
E1 — error by the pitcher (usually a failed fielding play, not a pitch)

What Counts as an Error#

The official scoring rules are clear on the principle but require judgment in practice: a fielder commits an error when they misplay a ball that a fielder in that position, with ordinary effort, would have handled successfully.

Double Plays

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Double Plays#

Two outs on one batted ball. The defense executes perfectly, the innings ticks along twice as fast, and the pitcher pumps their fist. The double play is one of baseball’s most satisfying sequences — and one of the more interesting things to record on a scorecard.

The Notation#

A double play is recorded as the fielding sequence (the chain of players who touched the ball) with a DP suffix or simply by the nature of the sequence itself.

Sacrifices

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Sacrifices#

A sacrifice is an out that was worth making. The batter gave themselves up — intentionally or by circumstance — to advance a runner. In return, the rules reward them by not counting it as an at-bat, which protects their batting average.

There are two types: the sacrifice bunt and the sacrifice fly.

SAC — Sacrifice Bunt#

The batter bunts the ball, is retired at first base, but advances one or more runners. Write SAC (or SH for sacrifice hit — both are used) in the cell, followed by the fielding sequence.

Fielder's Choice

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Fielder’s Choice#

A fielder’s choice happens when the batter hits a ball in play, reaches base, but doesn’t get credit for a hit — because the defense chose to retire a different runner instead of throwing to first.

Write FC followed by the fielding sequence:

FC 6-4 — shortstop fielded the grounder and threw to second to retire the lead runner; batter reached first
FC 5-4 — third baseman threw to second; batter safe at first
FC 1-6 — pitcher fielded it, threw to shortstop covering second

What Qualifies as a Fielder’s Choice#

The defining feature: the defense had a play on the batter at first, but instead made a play on another runner. The batter ends up on first base, alive, but with no hit credited.