Over the past year, together with my friend Shingo, I created a baseball statistics website, statsninja, which I am exceptionally proud of.

The idea behind statsninja was that users would be able to track what games they saw, and then see all the baseball statistics, only for those games. For example, wouldn’t you like to know if there is a certain mid-level player who just does exceptionally well when you happen to be watching, or maybe games where you’re in the crowd are just windier and longer than others that your team plays. The more Shingo and I spoke about this project, the more we got excited about it and Statsninja turned into a read labor of love, with Shingo and myself building out an entire social network in which you could follow and support your friends, a rudimentary trophy system where you earned trophies by seeing certain things (e.g. games in the cold, blowouts), a competition system where you could compare how teams did when you watched them vs. how they did when your friends watched them.

Working on statsninja was one of the most incredibly rewarding things I’ve ever done. Unfortunately, as is the way with these things, the ongoing effort required to collect and parse data from live (and sometimes unreliable) MLB feeds was a real drag, and although the site is the most exciting thing in the world, we just found the concept hard to explain to others in a way that got them excited about it. I’m putting this blog post up here with some screenshots so that people can see what the site was really all about

The Statsninja Overview

Statsninja makes watching sports better by providing a unique window into your own personal experience. Here’s how it works, in three easy steps:

Tag your games: To get started, all you need to do is tag some baseball games with some activity that you did. For example, maybe you could tag games you watched in the stadium, or games you watched in your favorite bar, or games during which you wore your favorite jersey, or games where you stood on your head during the seventh inning stretch. You have the power to create your own activity to customize your story.
Get Your Personal Story: Statsninja takes care of crunching all the numbers and shows you only the interesting things about your own experience. Ever had the sneaking suspicion that your favorite team scores more runs when you’re there? Or that a little-known outfielder is absolutely crusing it at the plate? Want to know whose player jersey you should be buying? We make it incredibly easy to find out!
Track and share your experience: Relive history by looking through those old games where you witnessed something incredible. Share these experiences and compete with your friends. Compare yourself to your friends; imagine finding out that when you both attend a game their winning percentage shoots through the roof, or that their favorite player only plays well when you’re there to see