Fair playing time
Balance innings on the field, avoid back-to-back sits, and create meaningful opportunities without manually counting every player’s assignments.
Defensive Lineup Generator
Build a lineup that fits how you coach.
Inningly turns player availability, playing-time goals, position preferences, pitching plans, and team rules into a fair, game-ready defensive lineup—without asking you to juggle every constraint in your head or rebuild a spreadsheet.
Start with a complete Free Team—not a limited-time trial. No credit card required.
Your game plan, inning by inning
Game-ready
79,833,600
possible defensive alignments
For one inning. Before adding the rules that matter.
With 12 available players and nine defensive positions, there are nearly 80 million possible alignments for a single inning. Add six or seven innings, fair bench time, pitching, position readiness, and league requirements, and the problem becomes impossible to solve exhaustively by hand.
See the lineup mathThe mental math behind every lineup
You already coach with constraints. Inningly keeps track of them.
Coaches do not randomly fill positions. Every assignment reflects player development, safety, fairness, pitching, and the way the team needs to compete that day.
Position readiness and safety
Prefer the positions where a player is developing well and prevent assignments at positions they are not yet ready to play safely, such as catcher or first base.
League and team rules
Use basic settings, player groups, and custom rules to represent mandatory-play requirements and the development priorities your team follows.
Your pitching plan
Set the complete pitching sequence, plan only the first few innings, or let the generator fill the open innings around availability and your rules.
Optimization—not a random shuffle
Let the computer handle the combinations. Keep the coaching decisions.
Under the hood, Inningly treats the lineup as a combinatorial optimization problem: which player should play which position in which inning while satisfying the applicable constraints.
The same broad class of constraint programming and integer optimization is used for demanding scheduling problems in transportation, manufacturing, and logistics. Inningly applies it to the decisions youth coaches make every game.
Available players
Rules and preferences
Pitching plan
Optimization engine
Evaluates valid combinations
Game-ready starting point
From roster to dugout card
A repeatable lineup workflow for every game
Set your coaching priorities once, then adjust the details for the game in front of you.
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1
Choose the game and players
Select an upcoming game and mark who is available. The generator works only with the players who will actually be there.
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2
Set how you want to coach
Confirm basic rules, player position preferences, group requirements, custom restrictions, and your pitching approach.
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3
Generate and refine
Generate a valid lineup, lock the assignments you like, regenerate the rest, and make any final manual adjustments.
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4
Save and get game-ready
Save the defensive grid, batting order, pitching plan, and availability. Export lineup and dugout cards when it is time to play.
The coach makes the call
A strong starting point—not a black-box final answer.
The generator removes the repetitive mental math without removing your judgment. You can generate another result, preserve part of a lineup, or directly change any assignment before saving.
- Lock a cell, an inning, or the whole grid to protect the choices you want to keep.
- Regenerate the unlocked assignments to explore another valid option.
- Make manual changes when game context or coaching instinct calls for something different.
- Review conflicting requirements when no lineup can satisfy every active rule.
Go deeper
The math, the workflow, and the step-by-step instructions
The problem
How many baseball lineups are possible?
See why even one inning creates nearly 80 million possible defensive alignments—and why each coaching rule adds another layer.
Explore the mathThe workflow
Use the Lineup Builder to your advantage
Walk through the complete planning process—from availability and pitching to generation, refinement, saving, and export.
Read the Lineup Builder guideThe instructions
Create a defensive lineup
Follow the current product steps for selecting a game, confirming availability, generating a lineup, locking assignments, and saving your work.
Open the help articleLineup Generator FAQ
Questions from the dugout
Does Inningly make the coaching decisions for me?
No. You define the availability, rules, preferences, and pitching approach. Inningly creates a valid starting point that follows those instructions. You can lock, regenerate, edit, and save the lineup you choose.
Can the generator follow our league’s playing-time rules?
Beyond basic lineup rules, Inningly supports player groups and custom requirements for more specific team or league needs. You choose which rules apply to the lineup being generated.
Can I prevent a player from being assigned to a position?
Yes. Position preferences help guide where players appear, while a “Never” setting can act as a hard restriction when detailed-position enforcement is enabled. This can support both player development and safe position assignments. Learn more in this help article.
Can I set the pitching plan before generating the defense?
Yes. Set the entire pitching plan, set only part of it, or allow the generator to choose pitchers for open innings. The defensive lineup is then built around that plan and the active rules.
What happens if the rules conflict?
If no result can satisfy the active availability and rules, Inningly explains that it could not build the lineup and provides possible reasons to review. Adjust the conflicting settings and generate again. Here's an example.
Does it work for both baseball and softball?
Yes. Coaches can configure the number of defensive players, innings, rules, and assignments to fit their youth baseball or softball team.
Bring your coaching priorities. Let Inningly handle the combinations.
Create your Free Team, add the roster and next game, and build a defensive lineup that reflects how you coach.
Complete Free Team • No trial deadline • No credit card