HeyBLU lets coaches break the rules

Here’s something you know all too well if your kid plays baseball, or you coach:

The rulebook strike zone does not exist in youth baseball.

Not in Little League. Not in travel ball. Not anywhere a teenager is standing behind the plate with a chest protector that’s three sizes too big.

MLB is chasing perfection with ABS. Good for them.

We’re chasing what the 14-year-old umpire is actually calling on Saturdays.

I set up HeyBLU at my own kid’s Minors practice last week. Single iPhone on a tripod. Tracked all of my want-to-be pitchers off the mound. The app was doing exactly what we built it to do—calling a tight, unforgiving, rulebook strike zone.

The problem?

That zone doesn’t exist in our league.

Our umpires are kids. They’re doing their best. The best of them are calling nose to ankles and six inches off the plate because they’re trying to keep the game moving and get the hitters to swing. Others randomly call over the head one pitch, and hitting the dirt the next.

So here’s what happened:

GameChanger says: My pitchers are throwing 50% strikes. That is my standard.

HeyBLU says (rulebook zone): 25% strikes. “What the heck?”

Me, yelling from the mound: “Actually, that’s a strike in this league!”

That data does not help anyone. Not me, not the kids, not the parents paying for pitching lessons outside of our practices.

Our newest beta update lets you adjust the strike zone.

Before you throw a single pitch, you can expand it higher, lower, or wider to match what your actual games look like.

Know your weekend tournament has a generous outside corner? Train your pitchers to live there on Wednesday.

Playing in a league where the ump won’t call anything above the belt? Shrink the top. Get realistic feedback.

The rulebook is beautiful. The rulebook is also wrong for your 10-year-old facing a 13-year-old umpire who just wants to go home.

Here’s the thing about youth baseball data:

If your practice stats don’t match your game reality, nobody uses the app after week two.

We built HeyBLU to be used. Every week. In the chaos of kids practices where they just want to know; “Was that a strike?”.

That means giving you control. Not just precision.

We are flying blind on the chaos of local fields. Why does one field work, and another doesn’t? We can’t tell without your data.

If you’re in the beta:

• Run a short session. Adjust the zone to fit your league.

• End the session. Tap the top center of your screen three times.

• Save the file. Email it to support@heyblu.ai.

Tell us the field type. Tell us if the custom zone worked.

We built this for you. But we can’t finish it without your garbage data.

Let’s be honest: the 14-year-old umpire isn’t getting better anytime soon.

So we made the app adjust to him.

Welcome to HeyBLU. The “ABS in your pocket”