How Bench Coach works

The short answer

Bench Coach is not an app you download, and it is not a chat window you log into. It is a connector you add to the assistant you already use, Claude or ChatGPT, and it gives that assistant your roster, your schedule, how you talk to your team, and what is on file about your opponents. You ask in the app you already have, on the phone or the laptop already in your hand, and the answer comes back out of your own files.

Why it is built this way

• There is no new app to learn. You ask in the same place you already ask everything else.
• There is no second subscription for the model. It runs inside the assistant account you already pay for, and it costs you nothing extra to run.
• Your files stay in one place. One roster, one schedule, one document about how you talk to your team, held on our server. The assistant sees the answer to the question it asked and nothing else.
• Nothing goes out on its own. There is no send path in the server at all, so there is no version of this where a message reaches a parent without you pressing send.
• It works on a phone. Add the connector once on a computer and it is there in the app on your phone, in the parking lot, the morning of a game.

What it is fed

Four things. Two of them are files you already have.

• Your roster. A CSV: the player, every position he has taken reps at, which side he bats and throws from, and the note your staff already keeps on him.
• Your schedule. A CSV: the date, the opponent, home or away or neutral, the travel, and whatever you want it to know about the game.
• How you talk to your team. A few paragraphs in your own words about your tone, what you always say and what you never say. That is what a draft gets written against.
• What is on file about your opponents. Computed facts about other programs, built from publicly available play by play and box scores. Not anything you uploaded, and not an export from a tracking system, which this server refuses on sight.

The two templates, the column names it reads, and the example messaging document are on the help page. Uploading all of it takes about five minutes.

What it does

Every answer it gives you comes out of one of these. There is nothing else in it.

• Tells you what it is holding for you. Which address you are signed in as, how many players, how many games, how many of those games are still ahead, whether your messaging document is loaded, and which opponents have facts on file. It says out loud when every game on the schedule is already behind you, which is how you catch last season's file still sitting there.
• Answers off your roster and your schedule. The whole roster as you uploaded it. Players found by position, by which side they bat or throw from, or by part of a name. The schedule in date order with upcoming games first. Who is next, every game in that series, and whether there is anything on file about them.
• Tells you who can cover a position. The players who have actually taken reps there. It hands you the names and leaves the order to you, because reps are not a depth chart and nobody but you knows who is available.
• Tells you what is on file about an opponent. Every computed fact for that team, or for one of their pitchers, with the sample behind it. It will also put one opponent pitcher's facts next to your own roster's left, right and switch hitting split, as preparation material rather than as a lineup card.
• Drafts a note in your voice, for your review. You give it the points. It writes the message against your own messaging document and hands it back to you as text, and the draft also lands in a review list on your setup page so you can copy it off a computer later.
• Checks the numbers in an answer. Ask it to check what it just told you and it verifies every figure against the numbers it actually looked up, and names any that do not trace back. Ask for that any time a number is going to end up in front of your team.
• Deletes everything. One command, confirmed in your own words, and your roster, your schedule, your document, your drafts and the account itself are gone.

It also carries three ready made walkthroughs your assistant can start from: walk the next series, a spot opened up at a position, and a note to parents.

The rules it cannot break

These are not promises about how it is meant to behave. They are how the server is built.

• Every number comes from your files, and it can be traced. Each one carries the id of the fact it came from and the sample size behind it, so you can see whether you are looking at one outing or a season.
• It says it does not know. If a number is not in your files or in the public data on file, you are told that plainly instead of getting a guess. A confident wrong answer about your own roster would be worse than no answer at all.
• It never sends anything. There is no send path in the server. Drafts come back as text on your screen and wait in a review list. You are the one who sends them, from your own mail or your own phone.
• Notes about injuries and eligibility are not kept. If what you ask for touches health, illness or eligibility, it still answers you, hands you the draft, and deliberately does not write the wording down anywhere.
• Your data is yours. It is not used to train anything, and one command removes all of it, immediately and permanently.
• Only your sign in reaches your files. Every question is bound to your account. There is no tool in the server that reaches across to another program.

What a session looks like

Three exchanges, written on the anonymized sample data already on this site. The shape of the answers is the point: the numbers carry their source, the sample size is stated when it is small, and the message waits for a coach.

What it will not do

• It will not play the game for you. It does not rank your players, it does not tell you who should start, and it does not write a lineup.
• It will not replace your judgment. It hands you what is on file and stops there, because the part it cannot see is the part you are paid for.
• It will not invent a scouting report. If there is nothing on file about a team, it tells you there is nothing on file about that team and says why, rather than producing a page of plausible numbers.
• It will not text or email anybody. Not a parent, not a player, not another coach. It writes the words down and hands them to you.
• It will not work without an assistant account that supports connectors. That is the one thing you have to have, and the plans that qualify are listed on the help page.
• It will not read an export from your tracking system. It recognizes one by its columns and refuses it before a single row is read. Those files carry agreements between your program and other people, and this stays out of the middle of it.

How a staff gets on

By invitation right now. It is being handed out a staff at a time, on purpose, so that when something breaks there is somebody on the other end of the phone who already knows your files.

After the invitation it is short. You get a code. You sign in on the setup page and upload your roster, your schedule and a few paragraphs about how you talk to your team, which is the five minutes. Then you add the connector once, on a computer, and it is on every device you use after that. The first question to ask it is what do you have on file for me, and if it reads your player and game counts back to you, you are finished setting up.

How to read it if you are a coach

Trust it the way you would trust an assistant who shows his work. Every number it gives you is attached to the fact it came from and the sample behind it, so a rate off one outing does not get to sound like a rate off a season, and it says so itself when the sample is thin. When a number is about to end up in front of your team, ask it to check the numbers in what it just told you. That runs a check inside the server against what it actually looked up, and anything that does not trace back gets named. If it ever hands you a number that cannot be traced, that is a bug on our side and we want the screenshot, not a workaround.

The three exchanges above are an example, written by hand on sample data, and every name and number in them is invented. They are there to show the shape of an answer. On your account nothing is scripted: the roster is the roster you uploaded, the schedule is the schedule you uploaded, and the opponent numbers are computed from public play by play and box scores for the teams you actually play. If a name comes back that is not on your roster, or a game comes back that is not on your schedule, that is worth an email, because the server is built so that it should not be able to happen.

Who is behind it

YourDataScouting is run by Matt Reichenbach out of Rantoul, Illinois. Computer engineer by training, more than twenty years building data and automation systems that run in production, youth baseball coach, and a parent of a player at the college level. He wrote this server, he answers the mail about it, and the invitations come from him rather than from a form. If something in here does not match what you are seeing on your screen, email [email protected] and a person answers.

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