How does READY decide who plays where?
READY solves each inning as a whole rather than sliding players around a wheel. It looks at everyone who's here today, everything they've already played this season, and every lockout you've set, then finds the assignment that spreads the innings most evenly. If a fair answer exists, READY finds it.
Bench rules
- No player sits a second time until every teammate has sat once.
- No player sits two innings in a row.
- When the roster math forces someone to take an extra inning off, READY gives it to whoever is furthest ahead on playing time for the season — not to whoever happens to be first on the list.
Infield and outfield
- Infield and outfield are counted as their own totals, not just as nine separate positions. When READY picks who fills a spot, that infield-versus-outfield balance outranks everything except bench fairness — the exact position only breaks ties.
- The count carries across the season. A kid who had a heavy outfield stretch last week comes into this week owed infield time, and gets it.
- You can see it: Season Totals has an IF and an OF column for every player, alongside the per-position counts. Pitcher and catcher belong to neither and are balanced on their own.
- Why it gets this much weight: a parent almost never says their kid didn’t get enough innings. They say their kid always plays right field. Equal innings can hide a lopsided season — in our own simulation, two players with exactly 90 innings each were 16 infield innings apart.
Position rules
- No player stays at the same position two innings in a row.
- No player repeats a position later in the game unless nobody else can cover it.
- Pitcher and catcher rotate across the season as well, each balanced on its own count — so the same kid doesn't end up on the mound every week.
- Once a pitcher leaves the mound, READY won't send them back out to it later in the same game — the Little League baseball rule. On by default, and you can switch it off.
Rules you control
- Lock any player out of any position — permanently, for safety or ability. Every position your league runs, including Rover and the fifth infielder, is right on the roster card.
- Hold a pitcher or catcher in place for 1–4 innings when you need to.
- Turn off "no catching after pitching" if your league doesn't care about it.
- Turn off the mound re-entry rule for softball, or for Junior and Senior divisions where a pitcher is allowed to return.
What if the math doesn't work?
Sometimes it can't. With 14 players and 9 positions over 6 innings, somebody is sitting more than somebody else — that's arithmetic, not unfairness. When that happens READY gets as close to even as the numbers allow and tells you, rather than quietly picking a favorite.
Can I overrule it?
Always. Move any player to any position, bench a kid who's hurt, drop someone into a spot READY wouldn't have chosen. Manual changes are yours and READY won't undo them. The rules govern what READY builds on its own.
What about the batting order?
Same idea. Every player who's here bats — continuous order, the way youth leagues actually run it. "Suggest Fair Order" spreads both the exact spot in the order and top-of-order versus bottom-of-order across the season, so the same kids don't hit ninth every week.
The game ended early. Now what?
Open the game in your Season Log and set the innings you actually played. READY recalculates that game so nobody is credited with innings they never took the field for — which matters, because those totals drive every lineup that comes after.
Build your first lineup
Free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. Works in any browser too — same account, same season history.
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Every rule on this page is one the app actually enforces. Where a rule is best-effort rather than guaranteed, we say so above rather than promising something the math can't always deliver.