Next Inning: Baseball Lineups

Plan the innings at the kitchen table, then run the dugout with no signal at the field. Free to use, no ads. Plan it. Toggle it. Play ball.

Next Inning is a lineup, fielding, and playing-time app for youth baseball coaches.

It is the top of the third. Your left fielder wants to pitch, a parent is asking why their kid sat two innings in a row, and you are holding a dry-erase board in one hand and a lineup card in the other. Next Inning replaces both. It is built for the innings you are coaching, not the recap afterward.

PLAN THE GAME Build the fielding rotation in a grid: players down the side, innings across the top, tap a cell to set a position. Or start from a generated plan: Next Inning fills every inning of fielding around your rules, each player's position preferences, and who has been sitting. You set the batting order yourself, by dragging it into shape (in continuous batting order) or copying it from a prior game.

Enter your limits once (minimum field innings, consecutive bench innings, pitcher innings, pitch caps, rest days) or start from a league preset, with a per-game override for tournaments. Enter pitch counts after an outing and Next Inning helps you track them: it flags a plan that breaks one of your rules and still lets you make the call.

RUN THE DUGOUT The dugout view is the point of the app: one screen, big type, high contrast, readable at a glance in direct sun from a few feet away. Tap a name, tap a position, and the inning is set. One tap steps to the next inning and the positions redraw.

Mark a player unavailable, mark an injury from an inning, or sub a player out; the batting order and fielding plan route around them. Position changes, swaps, and sub-outs have an undo, so a mis-tap costs you a second, not an inning.

On a tablet in landscape the batting order sits beside the field; on a phone you switch between the two, so the tablet can stay in the dugout while you coach from the baseline. Super-bright mode holds the screen at full brightness for noon games, and it stays awake between pitches.

WORKS OFFLINE Ball fields have bad service. Sign in once with your email; after that the dugout runs on the device. Every tap writes locally first and syncs when a connection comes back, so a dead zone at the back field behaves like full signal.

SHOW YOUR WORK Season totals per player: innings played, innings at each position, bench innings, pitch counts, games played, and a fairness score that rises when innings and infield time are spread evenly and nobody sits two innings in a row. Export the season fairness report as a PDF to print or bring to the playing-time conversation. It is a document instead of a memory, which is usually all that conversation needs.

YOU AND YOUR ASSISTANTS Invite an assistant coach with a six-character code. They sign in on their own phone and see the same lineup, fielding plan, and inning, usually within seconds when you both have signal.

ALSO IN THE APP

• Multiple teams; copy roster instead of retyping names each season
• Roster with jersey numbers, preferred positions, and positions to avoid
• Bullpen and on-deck planning, plus the pitching order
• Per-game availability, designated hitter, game summary with the score
• Schedule with opponent, home or away, field on a map, and game-time forecast
• Printable lineup card as a PDF for the umpire and scorekeeper
• Fractional innings, so a mid-inning swap counts honestly
• Coaching-staff chat per team and per game, with mute and report

WHAT IT DOES NOT DO Next Inning does not score the game, stream video, or broadcast to families. Other apps do that well and you can keep using them. This one helps you decide who plays where, and shows your work when someone asks.

Free to use. No ads. We never sell or rent player data, and a roster is visible only to the coaches you invite.

Next Inning is built for coaches. Head coaches and assistant coaches use it, and it stores roster information, so it is not designed for players to use.

Support: support@nextinning.app nextinning.app