There is perhaps a certain amount of expectation built into an app with baseball stat guru (and arguable sabermetric godfather) Bill James’ name on it. For many baseball stat geeks, James’ excellent number crunching was among the first outside the box analysis they might’ve read growing up. It was in my case, at least.
Perhaps that’s why, despite being a decent-enough app, Bill James Daily Match-Ups feels so uneventful. The main focus of the app is a pitcher vs. team statistical analysis for all of the day’s games.
Weirdly, the breakdown gives you only the most basic of stats, letting you know how many hits per at bats each player has against his opponent. If the batter has walked, hit a homer or struck out against the pitcher, that’s noted in the side margin as well. But that’s it.
There is also a “temperature” stat next to each player’s name that identifies whether the batter in question is currently trending up or down, but there’s no in depth analysis to be found.
In the app’s other main section, “Statistics,” players can look at any pitcher’s performance against any major league team. This time, the breakdown is a little more robust, giving you stolen bases and OPS for batters, some decent pitcher stats and even a few fielding stats. But there’s nothing here you couldn’t find at Baseball Reference in a few minutes.
If you view the convenience of having these stats close at hand in an app as a big bonus, then downloading Bill James Daily Match-Ups is a no-brainer. If you expected something that would change how you learned about baseball stats on your iPhone, well, this isn’t it.
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