Many of you have asked to have Gameday chat restored, and we haven’t provided much detail about that, so here is a quick update.

We’ve completely retired the old chat engine for a number of reasons: it was unreliable, could only support a very limited number of concurrent users, was very limited in features and was not integrated with other products.

In its place, we will be rolling out a completely revamped chat service by the All-Star break. However, it will not be a Gameday-only chat; instead, it will be better integrated with MLB.TV, the Fantasy Open and other products, with the goal of creating a more complete and immersive user experience.

We know that chat has been a very popular feature of Gameday so we are working hard to restore it and appreciate everyone’s patience while we build out this new version.

Thanks,

The MLB.com Gameday team

Thanks again to everyone for their feedback since our last post. Although it’s been a while since the last update, we have been busy working to address the comments and concerns expressed about Gameday since the start of the season, and we’ve introduced several important changes in the last week.

Most importantly, last Thursday we rolled out a new version of the application that is significantly less resource-intensive for your computers, and that drastically increases the speed and performance of the 3D pitch view. In fact, by our measurements the application is even faster now in the 3D viewing mode than last year’s version was in 2D! If you’ve been hesitant to use the 3D mode due to the strain on your computer, please try it again and let us know if you don’t think it’s noticeably faster.

In addition, we’ve made several other additions, enhancements and changes to make Gameday more informative and easier to use:

·         Added batter’s boxes and baselines in 3D view for better context and a more realistic depiction of the field; look for these features in the 2D view in coming weeks;

·         Added pitch mouseovers in 3D view to provide more data about the pitch;

·         Redesigned the Game Summary to make it easier to read and navigate;

·         The Box Score "snaps" to the table of the batting team and highlights the row for the current batter (as does the Lineup tab);

·         Added start times to the Scoreboard, plus an indicator when starting lineups are posted for each game;

·         The Scoreboard for each game flashes whenever either team scores, so you can keep track of events around the league;

·         Added more clicks to the Player Cards under the headshots for the current pitcher and batter, plus from the on deck and in-the-hole hitter names.

Finally, we’ve launched the Pitch-f/x program in Oakland so that detailed pitch data is now available for all A’s home games for the rest of the season. We are continuing to ramp up the hardware and software to operate this program in all ballparks across the league so watch for more as the season progresses.

Thanks again for your interest in Gameday and for your patience while we ironed out some of the rough edges from the start of the season. We remain committed to making Gameday the fastest, most detailed and most informative way to follow any live sport online, and we’ll keep working towards that goal.

Enjoy the games!

– The MLB.com Gameday team