EZBalance Baseball Lineup Spreadsheet

baseball players getting fair playing time

EZBalance Baseball Lineup Spreadsheet

"Whether you are a rookie or experienced coach, EZLineup makes creating your game line-up an enjoyable experience. It not only allows you to more easily place players into various positions, it challenges you to create the most effective line-up for your team. I've used EZ Line Up for years and continue to recommend it as the only tool you'll need to ensure each of your youth players gets a chance to experience many different fielding positions."

- John Y., Cincinnati

EZBalance Baseball Lineup is spreadsheet software designed to help youth baseball coaches balance winning with providing fair playing time and development opportunities for each player. The objective being keeping players returning to play baseball year after year.

Why You Need Balance

You are volunteering your time to coach youth baseball, t-ball or softball. You want to do the right thing. You want to give each player equal playing time regardless of their current skill level in order to help each player develop.

Unfortunately, not every coach in your league is as concerned with fairness. There will be coaches that are interested in only one thing--WINNING. He will trot his few "best" players to the same fielding positions inning after inning. The few "worst" players will split their time in the outfield and on the bench, hopefully fulfilling the league's minimum two inning playing time requirements in the process.

Until now, you have had three choices:

Choose "Winning" -- if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Put those best few players in the key positions, then sprinkle the leftovers in the outfield for the minimum number of innings required. The result: You may win, but you will have upset parents, a reputation of being one of "those" coaches, and most importantly, disappointed players who will not come back to play next year.
Choose "Fairness" -- Blindly assigning players to positions based on some set rotation, ensuring equal playing time. If your team doesn't win, so be it. If they aren't competitive, who cares. If they are stuck in an endless inning in the field because your first baseman cannot catch the ball, so what--we're having fun aren't we? The result: upset parents and disappointed players who will not come back to play next year.
Choose "Balance" (with a lot of manual effort) - This means spending a lot of time pouring over your lineup, studying fielding weaknesses by inning, adjusting the lineup, making sure the playing time is fair, adjusting the lineup again, studying the fielding positions again and so on and so on. This takes a lot of your time! Result: your players are happy, your parents are happy, but your boss, your spouse and your children are all feeling neglected because you have been spending so much time planning your baseball lineup!