Game Start Times

[The Shadow]

Our league has been having occasional game start time, and therefore roster change deadline issues with OnRoto this season that I've never noticed before. Last night, I had reason to suspect that OnRoto was wrong again. I usually check them against your Dashboard times, but last night, your time was also what I thought to be incorrect. It turns out, I was right, and both you and OnRoto had the correct time this morning when I got up. The game in question was the Angels at Miami game, which starts at 4:10 Eastern, but you both listed last night as starting at 1:10 Eastern last night, which incorrectly made it the first NL game of the day.

I am writing this because we have discovered another problem at OnRoto - when ESPN is broadcasting the first NL game of the day (I don't check AL games), OnRoto is being fed the ESPN broadcast start time SOMETIMES, instead of the game start time. The ESPN broadcasts always start on the hour or half hour, meaning they are off by 5 to 10 minutes on occasion. I have never noticed the Dashboard have this particular error.

I'd like to ask, what is your source for game start times, but I realize you may not want to answer that question. If you cannot answer to me here, can you at least forward your source to Scott at OnRoto so that they can get the correct game start times set, and leagues everywhere can get a daily transaction deadline that is accurate every day.

PS - OnRoto tells us they get their early info from ESPN, because ESPN is the first to post a game time feed, but roll to something called BIS eventually. I also realize that OnRoto may not fix this mid-season, but hopefully, they will fix it for next year, if not.

[RAY@HQ]

Our schedule information comes from Baseball Info Solutions, our stat provider. I was under the impression that OnRoto used BIS too, though your info above seems to contradict that.

We don't get anything from ESPN.

[The Shadow]

Thanks for the reply.

OnRoto elaborated. They use ESPN for the following day's start time right after the current day's deadline passes. At some point, they get a feed from BIS, and then they switch their deadline based on that new feed.

Of course, this presents a new problem - once in a while, BIS has the same incorrect start time, base on a broadcast start time on the hour or on the half hour. In fact, yesterday (5/30), BIS sent OnRoto a first NL start time of 19:00 instead of 19:05. ESPN showed 19:00 as the start time of the 19:05 Dodger game. BIS had 19:00 as the start time of the Cincinnati game (which was actually scheduled for 19:07).

OnRoto and BIS are both going to have to sort this out at some point.

[The Shadow]

FWIW, the OnRoto times for 5/31 are correct, but ESPN is not carrying an early game (probably because MLB usually has a free game on Wed). This somehow seems to be part of the equation.

****** BUT *****

Your Dashboard is currently showing the first 5/31 game as Cincinnati at 12:00, when MLB, ESPN, and others are showing the first game as Arizona at 12:35, while they all show Cincinnati at 12:37.

[RAY@HQ]

I'll drop a note to BIS. But I know that ESPN is not part of the equation for us.