In-season Update 1
There has been several complaints about Gameday being larger than available screen real-estate. We did some analysis on what browser resolution most people have and made modifications to the footprint to address the issue in ways that will accommodate as large of a user base as possible. Hopefully this alleviates some of the nuisance from scrolling. Unfortunately the only way to address the footprint resize and keep Gameday free is to have the Ad unit take up some of the boxscore space (like we did last year).
We’ve also modified the center column area so core game information is easier to view from one location. We hope making it look like TV display will be familiar to our fans.
New also is the Video Tab, which will have collection of in-game video highlights for easy access.
The Scoreboard Alert functionality (click on little [+] sign to subscribe for each game) will display alert-box style messaging at the bottom right corner of your screen to announce various game information when available. This is now working properly.
In-season update two will hopefully be Gameday Mini and 3D (with camera angle controls). Stay tuned.
PS. Thanks for the report on Chat service being down. It is fixed now.
Gameday 
I posted this to the other thread, but figured I would repost here:
WOW! Thank you guys so much. You’ve really improved the “human factors” issue from the last release of gameday.
— No more scrolling up and down to see the status of the game. (only if you want some pitch details, or park details.)
— Click between games and everything shows up.
— The key information all within the same area including score, inning, count, # of outs, men on base.
— easy access to videos
There are still issues to think about, but this is sooooo much better than before!!
wow, something positive for a change. thank YOU!
Why did you move the count? It is now smaller and harder to read, and placed awkwardly and out of the way at the top. I much preferred the larger count at the bottom. Now I have to look at small text at the top of the screen, scan down past the batter, and then find the play-by-play. Please, change it back! There was nothing wrong with the old version.
I agree with the first comment – WAY much better layout.
I also agree with you – it is unfortunate that the ad block takes up so much of the box score space.
I should mention here that the service is actually getting good enough that I wouldn’t mind paying something to get rid of the ad block altogether… like $10-$15 per season.
The biggest improvement I can ask for is in the area of getting the stringers to pay more attention to the game. In some games I have watched on TV and on Gameday (which is what I usually do), Gameday is usually a pitch or two behind. Sometimes, though, Gameday can sit there without moving for up to 7 or 8 minutes, and then suddenly five or six pitches come through – or even more. Some of the delays are so long that I think I need to reload the page, but then I see a scoreboard update, so I know I’m still connected. Other times I do reload, and am brought right back to the pitch I was “stuck” at earlier. The record for me so far this year is one game that I waited a full half inning before Gameday caught up.
I’m disappointed to see the return of the ad taking up space…was that honestly the only to avoid scrolling?? That is really frustrating and while the other improvements are commendable, this is overall a step back to have a pointless add clogging up the UI.
Just to harp the point home….the addition of the ad box is awful. And why must it be placed on the side with the most information? Removing it all together would be ideal, but if you must constantly annoy everyone take up some space on the left side. The little field is much less important than the box score.
Its been a while since I’ve checked espn’s version of Gameday. I always thought it lagged behind the real Gameday. But after a quick look, it seems to have closed the gap. It doesn’t have the pitch tracking feature but I think the UI is much nicer. And best of all, no ads! If you haven’t looked at it in a while its worth checking out.
MLB…..Many users are still experiencing “error code 401 not authorized” when trying to access gameday chat. Please help.
(I made a similar post in the other thread.)I don’t understand why the ad had to be moved on top of data. Previously, it was at the top of the screen, so once the page loaded, you just scrolled down a little to move it out of the way. The old ad placement was infinitely better than losing space for game info.I’ve found a few things that need tweaking, the first two of which are pretty important:
? When choosing the Lineups/Bench view, the batter at the plate should be highlighted as in the Boxscore view (it’s a lot easier to follow a live game using the lineups, especially with all the substitutions in a National League game).
? Similarly, the inning-by-inning score should be displayed in the Lineups/Bench view as well.
? “Groundout,” “flyout,” “popout,” etc. are each one word when used as nouns (as in the batter history). (They are currently shown correctly as two words when used as verbs (as in “Derek Smith grounds out”).)
? The batter view seems to waste space, especially at the top. If this area were tightened up, then more space could be given to the play-by-play.
The updates are nice and I like the new layout a lot more.
However, a number of the people operating the backend of Gameday need some training or something. Especially the person in charge of the Dbacks-Dodgers game right now. There are frequent 10 minute breaks between pitches, and the pitches to one batter are often mixed into the pitches to another (just saw Chris Snyder apparently get 9 pitches thrown to him, when in reality he was intentionally walked).
the gameday is too complicated, i rather have the one from last year where it was a pop up.
This is so much better. The screen is still a little big, but if I full-screen, it’s ok. The game does still lag, but I don’t think as bad. Nice update.
This update is a great improvement. Thank you for changing!
I would like to be able to turn off the animated trajectory because it eats up a lot of cpu. The rest of gameday is not devouring the cpu all the time, which it did before the update, so that aspect has also improved.
I noticed that the MLB homepage is also a lot easier on my computer’s cpu usage since that page was modified in the last couple of weeks. Good work!
After watching a couple of innings, I’ll take back what I said about the animated trajectory. It doesn’t seem to be taking a lot of cpu time to draw that after all. The cpu fans accelerate when a new batter comes to the plate because several parts of the gameday screen have to be updated and some of those are scrolling text boxes. The scrolling seems to cost the most cpu time now. Most of the time the fans are quiet and the cpu is available for my real work, so I’m very pleased with this update.
The subtle visual cues that have been added, such as the fading green and red backgrounds of the strike count after each pitch and the yellow frame around the stats of the current batter are very nice.
its not working and i downloaded everything!
MLB…… Can I please get some direction on what “error code 401 not authorized” means when trying to access Gameday chat? This used to work and now it does not. Many users are experiencing the same problem. Please advise… Thanks. I have yet to see anything from MLB as to what this means.
In the archive when you are on the linups/bench tab, you cant click the other team’s linups and bench. It only changes for a split-second and then changes back. This is important because i might want to see who each team had left on the bench at the end of the game.
Thanks for the video interspersed into the game. However, I would much rather see defensive plays than offensive. Please add more of those exciting plays that I hear but don’t get to see. thanks!
i like the improvements you all did on Gameday especially the outs/strikes/balls one but there are two things i would like to suggest. One, bring the strike zone back because i want to see if the call the ump made was good or bad. Two, can you please put some light indicator on how many outs there are on the other games or else you have to go to them to see how many there are. You are doing a great job on gameday and i and everyone else would really appreciate the improvements suggested above. Thanks a lot MLB!!!!!
Hey gameday crew, i have some improvements for update two.
One, bring the strike zone back. I want to see if the umps calls were good or bad. Two, can you please put some indicator lights on how many outs there are on the other games. Please try to put these improvements up because i and everyone else will really appreciate them. Thanks gameday crew you are doing a great job.
First of all,I like the new format and will comment further in a sec. BUT . The folks here who complain about the ads is silly. Get over it. The ads keep the price WE pay down,so shut up. Also,the complaints about screen size are easily solved IF You know anything about MicroSoft and how to customize your view. And the guy who said ‘bring back the strikezone’ is wacko. the screen shot assumes abatter that has NO BEARING on the actual batter in that batters box. Which leads me to My third point- Showing the graphics of spin and velocity and wahtever those mumbojumbo numbers mean is Meaningless. that is for GEEKS. baseball fans want the count- men on a base- the outs and who did what intheir atbat. WHO CARES if the ball had a certain angle? which probably wrong. For enstance wang pitches a sinker but the graphics list it a a curve. WHO cares? the result is what i want.
look here uncle dave or whatever your name is the strike zone is essential to see if the umpires give lousy calls or the right calls so that is the reason i want the strike zone BACK. And if you play fantasy and two of your players are up at the same time then you want to see if your player got out or a hit and if you put “out” indicator lights up then you won’t have to go to the other game to see what your player did. And get the ads out, probably only 1% of the people watching gameday even bother to click them. There does that satisfies you uncle dave or what if not state reason on comments.
warm up on the white sox-twins game
is your name DAVE TALSNESS or what, uncle Dave?
I’ve had some major issues with the quality of the play by play. For example, a batter will come up and disappear leaving us with no clue as to what happened. As if the batter was completely skipped. It is usually corrected in 3-4 minutes but in the meantime the current batter has come and gone. It’s very frustrating because if there is one reason to watch Gamecast it is to follow along with play by play.
I agree that the size of the count should have been left alone. It should be the easiest thing to find on the screen. Don’t get me wrong, I love all the new features but lets not forget about the basics.
I have been watching gameday for the last 3 or 4 years and while the graphics have improved greatly, the lag-time or delay has gotten worse and worse. It is now common for there to be at least a batter or two delay to every action. The screen will show one pitch to a batter then nothing for 3 – 5 minutes! Next change on the screen is an automatic jump to the next inning. This is not an occasional occurence, it is the norm and has made your product UNWATCHABLE!
It was easier to follow a game 3 years ago when your graphics sucked but at least you could follow pitch-by-pitch.
Perfect example. Watching CWS vs MIN. Bottom of 4th, Carlos Gomez doubles tying the score. Graphic continues to show Gomez for next 5 min. Meanwhile even the scoreboard update at the top of the page shows MIN has scored another run to go up 3 -2 but on screen graphic continues to show Gomez still up to bat. Then it jumps to Joe Mauer at bat and details tell us that another run has scored but in game box still shows 2 – 2 while scoreboard at top says 3 – 2. Inning ends and gameday has yet to show 3rd run even though details in box show 3 runs. Gameday is SOOOOO screwed up I can’t believe how pathetic your product and updates are!
THIS HAS BECOME UNWATCHABLE – YOU HAVE LOST A VIEWER WHO WAS GOING TO UPGRADE TO MLB.TV BUT NOW WOULDN’T GIVE YOU ANY MONEY FOR THIS CRAP!
Exactly iftcorp. That has no doubt been the biggest issue. There are just so many inconsistencies amongst the data on the screen. It seems like the program would not allow those sort of mistakes to occur.
This may be a dead issue, but it sure doesn’t go away for me. I’m fine with the ad being necessary to allow gameday to be free. But I really hate the location. I would much rather cover the field, for example. So here’s what I propose: why not let us MOVE the ad to wherever we want it? From the ad-maker point of view it’s probably a plus – we’re more likely to click on it by accident (isn’t that the idea?) if we can touch and move it. Or you could let fans vote on the location. I’m 100% sure that the chosen location would be somewhere else. That’s my two cents.
I’m seeing excessive CPU usage when Gameday is running on my machine. When I run it on Safari, the CPU usage (just for Safari) hovers around 50%. When I run it on Firefox, the CPU usage (just for Firefox) jumps to 95+%.
I am running the most recent versions of Safari (3.1.1), Firefox (2.0.0.14) and Flash (9.0.124.0). I utilized the provided uninstaller for Flash ensure that it was a good install of the most recent version.
I am using a MacBook Pro an 2.33 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB of RAM and running OS X version 10.4.11.
Why is Gameday demanding this much CPU usage?
Here is a suggestion for better display of box score information. It would be much more user-friendly if the two teams were separated onto individual tabs. This would enable most or all of the box score data to fit in the allocated space without having to scroll up and down so much!! ESPN does it this way and it is much better. Unfortunately, their service is lacking the completeness of the box score data that MLB displays.
you know what really stinks is the advert in the bottom right. it makes me have to constantly scroll up and down the box score.
Espn is so much cleaner. i guess they don’t need the money as much as MLB. I pay for the audio but i’ll just follow it on espn
what a wimp out to say you need the ad box to take up half of the box score space! it is your own ad! what do you do? pay yourself? one should at least be able to minimize it if desired. and if one has already purchased one of the products…. (mlb.tv or audio) it should be programed automatically to go away! it is easy to program that way because we sign in for the service. we have already paid you the extra fee for the product that is now an annoying ad! we can’t buy it twice! give us a break and don’t give us idiotic explainations for your folly and bad decision makers in marketing. the other wimp out is taking the box of the strike zone out of the picture…. (you had it for a while last year)… can’t we see how bad the umpires are? we can tell anyway. stop protecting the umpires. it should only make them better and more accurate to see their mistakes.
I for one hate how small the virtual TV screen is now. Why not give people the option to make it larger or smaller? This would eliminate complaints on both sides.
Man this is just great… I love the video feature!
My only problem is that I can’t open it in Firefox, it only works on Safari. I kind of don’t care though because I have both.
Great job keep it up!
Can anyone help me with “chat error code 401”? The chat function used to work until I subscribed to MLB HD. Tried everything from uninstalling to reinstalling. Please help….(Macbook owner btw)
First – congratulations on a great application.
Second – I don’t quite know how Gameday works, but today I noticed errors in the stats and I would like to know if this is human error or from the application. In particular, the BALTIMORE vs OAKLAND game – the statistics for LEFT ON BASE are erroneous. There are way too many runners being accounted for as LOB when they are not actually LOB. I had to point this out, because I am seeing the error right now as we speak in more than one MLB game on Gameday.
Oh one suggestion, can you guys make it so when you play a video it takes the place of the pitch animation screen (and leaving the rest of the screen as it is), instead of clearing the rest of the screen?
thank you for the video options on Gameday this year. Please, please, please, please offer more defensive plays for me. Offense is nice but a homerun is a homerun. I can picture it from the announcers. The defensive plays are only described as “spectacular” or “amazing”. It would be great to see those “in person”. Thanks!
Game day audio will not not come on. Subscription paid for year and even have received first copy of SI. Where is the help desk???
I notice you implemented the suggestion by “xxx@x.com” (May 7, 2008 9:13 PM) that the video not completely replace the rest of the information. That was a good idea, and so thanks for that.
Now, how about my suggestion (April 25, 2008 12:47 AM) to put the inning-by-inning score and to highlight the batter at the plate in the Lineups/Bench view (instead of having them only in the Boxscore view)? You’ve got the room. Thanks for your time.
Looks like you guys responded by replacing the pitch animation screen with the video for playbacks (and added more defensive plays).
My firefox (2.0.14) installation used to be able to play the video before this change. Now, not so much.
I did confirm that it works via my IE6. Did some sort of Silverlight change get introduced too?
Will try a Silverlight on firefox re-install followed by a cache trash to see if I can get the Gameday video back.
I love MLB.com’s Gameday more than any other live tracker. My only complaint is that there are terrible useless stats available for the pitchers. Unlike ESPN and Yahoo, there are no stats such IP, K or stats about RHB and LHB.
Is there any possibility of making more useful stats available on the left click of a pitcher’s name?
this is my first season watching major league baseball again since the player strike in 1994, but that’s another story .. Gameday and MLB fantasy baseball has brought me up to speed remarkably fast .. i’ve really enjoyed following the Toronto pitching staff recently .. i made a big fantasy blunder this week starting the Chi Sox over the Blue Jays .. after hours of careful “research”, i decided the Jays would be swept by Cleveland in the double header Monday .. so, i watched both games on Gameday to see how well i did in that prediction .. for 18 innings it looked like i was a genius, LOL .. regardless, it was one of the most pleasureable double-headers i’ve ever “seen” – better perhaps than watching it on tv or even at the game
last night, i missed all the games and went back to review the wrap on the TOR v.s MIN game .. i was delighted to see the Wrap tab was disabled and the Gameday tab was still available
i’d love to have the ability to tab back to a finished game using the Gameday tab and “watch” it pitch-by-pitch as if it were live .. i was able to step thru the significant innings of this game which was great, but i missed “seeing” the pitches
anyway, great product .. i’ve enjoyed it very much and look forward to your continued improvements
The new Gameday video feature you added that comes up in the pitching window now does not let me choose to use the old Windows Media Player. As one who can’t use Silverlight (older version of OSX and not gunna get a new version when it’s possible to use WMP), please allow the chance to choose again. Being overseas, this is the only way I can get my MLB.
Thanks
Gameday Audio is a paid subscription service, what is with the new ads we have to watch before we access the audio feed? Boo, hissssss
I think it’d be great if there were a little more information displayed on the pitcher’s tag on the left side of the screen, over the current batter and on deck/in the hole batters. Currently, it just displays three lines — name/number/handedness, record and ERA, and pitch count with strikes and balls. It’d be much more useful if it would also display a fourth line with the pitcher’s current line, much like the batter’s tag displays their stats for this game (third line: X-for-Y; fourth line: flyout, strikeout, etc.). Even just a count of runs, hits, strikeouts and walks charged to that pitcher would be awesome, if not a true linescore.
Is there anyway that you could implement “hot zones” (hit zones) for all the batters? Also, it would be nice if there was a option to see a spray chart of the different teams and where they are hitting the ball in the stadium. And maybe you could add more stats to the players and pitchers when you click on their names, like add the stats of pitcher vs. batter. If you could add all of this, I believe gameday would be better than ever.
Is there a problem going on? I can’t get Gameday since last eve. (6/19). I can get standings and scoreboard, but no Gameday and no videos. HELP!!!
I hadn’t tried Gameday since the first of the season and did the other day. HUGE improvement. Much more usable.
I love the new Video highlights. However, I’m wondering how you decide which highlights to show. It’s obvious you favor scoring plays, and that makes sense. But, you also do some of the more exceptional defensive plays.
I’d like to make 2 suggestions with regard to choosing defensive plays.
1st. Pitcher’s picking off a runner and runners caught stealing are less common plays, and rarely included in the video highlights. Include these when you can. A 2nd baseman snagging a line drive, but it’s a pretty common occurrence now, yet you love to include those. Perhaps, besides including normal ‘good’ plays, include plays that occur less frequently, even if they aren’t necessarily spectacular with anyone ending up on the ground.
2nd. Consider trying not to favor one team’s defense over another’s by including more of their plays. I realize that sometimes it can be really lopsided, but not always. Instead of showing 3-4 semi-spectacular (like another shortstop snagging a line drive) plays by one team and none by the other, try to find some by both teams, when you can. If you include the caught stealing and pickoff plays as I’ve suggested above, that might help.
In the original post, you said that “Gameday Mini” would be available during the season. Am I missing it, or did it never appear? I liked the old version that I could keep in a corner of my monitor while I worked on something else.
I don’t really see the point of being able to pan around the field. This feature would be great if the trail of a batted ball was available, but when just pitches are available, it’s pretty useless. Choosing one of the 3 views is really more than enough.
Video highlights seem to appear on a timely basis early in the game, but are very very slow to appear from the 5th inning on it seems. Also, show more fielding plays please.