From the Dugout to the Dashboard
Every coach knows the moment. It's 30 minutes before first pitch, and you're standing in the dugout with a pencil stub, a wrinkled lineup card, and 14 players who all need fair playing time. You're trying to remember who sat last game, which pitcher hit their count on Thursday, and whether the league requires two innings of infield time or three.
That's the moment Who's on Second was built for.
The Pregame Problem
Building a lineup sounds simple until you actually have to do it. You've got league rules to follow, pitch count limits to respect, and a season's worth of fairness to balance. Miss something and you'll hear about it, either from the league or from the parent in the third-base bleachers keeping their own tally.
Most coaches start with what they know: a pencil and paper. It works for the first game or two. Then come the questions. "Why hasn't my player played shortstop?" "You pitched her three days ago, can she really go again?" "He's sat the bench three games in a row."
Suddenly, lineup building isn't a five-minute task anymore. It's the thing you're thinking about at 11 PM on a Friday night.
Spreadsheets Were Better Than Napkins. Barely.
The natural next step is a spreadsheet. Coaches build elaborate Google Sheets to track innings, positions, and pitching. Some of them are genuinely impressive.
But spreadsheets don't warn you when you're about to violate a rule. They don't calculate rest days. They don't update fairness stats automatically. And they definitely don't work well on your phone in the dugout when a player shows up late and the whole lineup needs to shift.
We've seen coaches with spreadsheets that take 45 minutes to update after a single game. That's time they could spend, well, coaching.
What We Built
Who's on Second is the tool we wanted when we were standing in that dugout. Here's what it does:
- Drag-and-drop lineup builder that works on your phone, tablet, or laptop
- Configurable rules engine that knows your league's specific requirements
- Automatic pitch count tracking with rest day calculation
- Season-long fairness dashboard showing every player's innings and positions
- Auto-generate that builds a compliant, fair lineup in one click
- Printable lineup cards ready for the clipboard
Every rule is a toggle. Minimum play, consecutive bench limits, mandatory infield innings, pitching restrictions. Turn on what your league requires, leave the rest off. The lineup builder warns you in real time when something doesn't look right.
Built for the Dugout
We built this for coaches who are standing at the field, not sitting at a desk. The interface works on a phone screen because that's what you have in the dugout. Players can be dragged onto positions with a thumb. Pitch counts can be entered between innings. The fairness summary can be pulled up when a parent has questions.
Parents get their own read-only access too. They can see their player's position history, innings played, and pitch count data without needing to ask the coach. Transparency builds trust, and trust makes the season better for everyone.
Your Season Starts Here
We built Who's on Second because we believe lineup building should take minutes, not hours. Because fairness should be tracked by data, not memory. And because coaches signed up to coach, not to manage spreadsheets.
If any of this sounds familiar, give it a try. The demo takes about two minutes and doesn't require an account. Or sign up free and bring your real roster along.