The finalists of the MLBAM Bases Coded Tech Challenge are in Chicago where the World Series is being played to build baseball apps and present them to judges on Saturday. The winners will get to attend Game 4 of the World Series between the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs.
The finalists participated in a 24-hour hackathon that concluded on Friday to design and build their dream apps for baseball fans.
The teams have access to MLBAM’s private data and APIs to create their apps, an Amazon Web Services instance to host their apps, and New Relic’s complete product platform to measure the performance of the apps.
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The baseball data the teams may choose to incorporate include game data such as team and player stats and live game data, Statcast data, MLB.com content like articles and videos, and event attendance information.
The apps will be assessed and evaluated by Chad Evans, senior vice president of mobile product development at MLBAM; Will Leitch, senior writer at Sports on Earth; Todd Etchieson, vice president of customer analytics at New Relic; and Akif Malik, CEO of Sports Colab.
The areas the judges will be evaluating are how original the idea is, if the product provides use or value to a consumer, how efficiently the product performs, and if the team presents its data clearly and concisely.