![\"ZED](\"https://img.youtube.com/vi/1b6BzhnNtWY/0.jpg\")
Five years ago, I made the difficult decision to leave my dream job at the New York Yankees front office. But ever since then, I've had this nagging itch to work on my own baseball analytics projects. Build something from scratch. Dive back into a field that I’ve always been passionate about.
\nSo why didn't I?
\nThe truth was that I was almost always too tired to write more code after coding all day at my day job. Instead, I'd go to the gym, plop down on the couch, and binge whatever was on Netflix. And honestly? I don't blame myself. I think a lot of engineers working in tech can relate to that feeling. \"I'll start that side project this weekend\" is the biggest lie we tell ourselves.
\nFor five years, that's exactly how it went. The itch never went away, but the energy and motivation to actually do the work were not quite there.
\nThen came the seismic shift of agentic coding tools.
\nWhen agentic coding tools like Claude Code first came out in 2025, I admit I didn't think THAT much of them. I'd been using LLMs to help me write code for a few years, and I assumed it would shift the needle a bit more in terms of speeding up my typical workflow.
\nThere's the old Henry Ford saying about the innovation of cars: \"If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.\" If the early days of code autocompletion was a horse, then Claude Code is a goddamn Ferrari. It has completely changed how I think about building anything and everything.
\nThe mental burden has shifted dramatically. Instead of grinding through code, debugging errors, and worrying about architectural decisions, my mind is now free to focus on strategy. What kind of predictive model should I build? What does success look like? I think of an approach and describe it. Then, Claude runs with it, does comprehensive research online, and builds an elegant implementation in about five minutes. I ask it to evaluate the change and it spits out a clean summary of metrics. It feels like having J.A.R.V.I.S. from the Iron Man movies.
\nHere's the wild part: I've made meaningful progress on this project from my phone, nowhere near my laptop, while comfortably watching TV on the couch. The same couch that used to be where my side projects went to die is now where they come to life.
\nClaude Code wrote 99% of the code for me. The project reached its current state in only a few weeks of part-time work. It would've taken me months if I had to write every line myself, and honestly, it'd probably be buggier and lower quality.
\nWith fantasy baseball season approaching, I decided to build a machine learning model that predicts hitters' stats for the 2026 season. Specifically, the six stats that we score in a fantasy league with my friends: on-base percentage (OBP), slugging percentage (SLG), home runs (HR), runs (R), RBIs, and stolen bases (SB).
\nPlenty of baseball nerds like me have built projection models, but this one is quite distinct due to its multi-task learning (MTL) neural network architecture.
\nWhat makes the MTL model special? Instead of training six completely independent models (one per stat), it learns all six stats together through a shared backbone. The model's backbone extracts general features from the input, and each prediction \"head\" is uniquely designed to process those features to predict a specific stat. Think of it like a student studying for six different exams at once, where knowledge from one subject helps with the others. The model predicts rate stats like OBP and SLG, then feeds those predictions into the count stats like home runs and RBIs. It captures the natural relationships between stats; for example, a player with a high on-base percentage is probably going to score more runs.
\nSince the MTL model has multiple prediction heads, I decided to name it \"Baseball Hydra\" or just Hydra for short.
\nUnder the hood, the model training pipeline pulls all 1.1 million Statcast batted ball metrics from the 2016 to 2025 seasons, plus FanGraphs stats, sprint speeds, bat speeds, ballpark factors, and more. All of that gets distilled into 100+ engineered features that describe a hitter's profile, like exit velocity percentiles, barrel rates, expected walk rate, sprint speed, etc.
\nYou can find a CSV file of the full projections here.
\nSo how do the results stack up against existing models? In baseball analytics, ZiPS and Steamer are two of the most well-known and well-regarded public projection systems. They've been refined over many years by some of the smartest people in the industry.
\nMy Hydra model already beats both models in mean RSME when backtesting over the last 4 seasons. Not too bad for a few weeks of vibe coding from the couch!
\nHere are the full benchmark results. It covers 1,063 player-seasons from 2022-2025. These are RMSE numbers, so a lower number is better:
\n| System | \nOBP | \nSLG | \nHR | \nR | \nRBI | \nSB | \nMean RMSE | \n
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Hydra | \n0.0306 | \n0.0621 | \n7.49 | \n19.01 | \n19.83 | \n6.87 | \n8.882 | \n
| ZiPS | \n0.0289 | \n0.0594 | \n7.45 | \n19.71 | \n21.24 | \n6.41 | \n9.151 | \n
| Steamer | \n0.0294 | \n0.0602 | \n7.96 | \n20.94 | \n21.55 | \n6.53 | \n9.512 | \n
| Last season | \n0.0352 | \n0.0726 | \n8.65 | \n22.37 | \n23.23 | \n7.35 | \n10.284 | \n
Hydra is 2.9% ahead of ZiPS and 6.6% ahead of Steamer on aggregate mean RMSE. The largest gains come from the counting stats R and RBI. Presumably, this is where the MTL model architecture's cross-stat sharing helps the most.
\nNow, I'm not about to claim victory over these systems just yet. There's still gaps to close; even though my model performs better in aggregate, it is still behind ZiPS in predicting OBP and SLG.
\nOn top of that, there are other models like The Bat X and ATC that are known to have the best performance amongst publicly available projections, but I wasn’t able to benchmark against them due to a lack or historical data (if you’re reading this and do have this data and want to share them with me, please hit me up!)
\nPersonally, I am annoyed that Hydra predicts only ~40 home runs this year for Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani, my two favorite players. It seems quite conservative with predictions in general, which may make it look quite good when players “regress to the mean,” but it would fail to predict outlier season performances.
\nDespite some shortcomings, the fact that a novel multi-task approach can get this close, this quickly, is a really encouraging signal. It tells me that this architecture is onto something, and with more time and refinement, it can quickly become even better.
\nThere are still plenty of other improvements that I'd like to try, including more sophisticated contact quality features, improved metrics for expected strikeouts and walks, injury history, minor league data, and sequence modeling of pitch outcomes... not to mention the need to build a new model or expand this one to cover pitching stats.
\nBelieve it or not, not everything about agentic AI is perfect.
\nWhile working on Hydra, I didn't realize until very late that the model was treating the 2020 season like any other MLB season. But ask any baseball fan (or person older than 7) why 2020 was unlike any other year in the past or present; they would immediately know why. Thanks to COVID, there were only 60 games played that year compared to a normal year's 162 games.
\nIt's funny how Claude Code was able to discuss advanced machine learning and sabermetrics like the smartest human alive, but it failed to consider the simple fact that COVID impacted baseball in 2020, significantly distorting the dataset and model training.
\nThe fact that agentic AI is so smart 95% of the time is also what makes it dangerous... what happens when we blindly trust it during the other 5%? We still need humans tightly coupled with AI interactions; an observation that is trivial to a human still may not be obvious to machine. We can easily fall into the trap of lazily accepting AI output, but we are still needed for critical thinking to distinguish the fake-smart from the real-smart. The people that are able to do this effectively are now wielding superpowers.
\nSomething unexpected happened along the way. I started getting dopamine hits from creating instead of mindlessly scrolling through my phone or watching TV. My side project stopped feeling like work and started feeling like play.
\nI wrote about the benefits of publishing your work a few years ago, and one of my favorite takeaways was how the creative process provides a much more meaningful sense of fulfillment than consuming content. Building this project has been a perfect reminder of that, especially the feeling of being free to think about high-level details like a grand architect.
\nThere's one funny downside though: I feel more guilt when I'm not working on some kind of side project. When a side project required writing every line of code myself, I had an excuse for making slow progress. But when AI can crank out features in minutes? Suddenly, the only bottleneck is whether I actually type out a prompt. The excuses are running out.
\nAt the end of the day, I'm just a guy who loves baseball and missed being close to the game. Agentic coding tools gave me a way back in, and I'm having more fun than I expected.
\nMy Baseball Hydra project is open source on GitHub if you want to check it out. Whether you're into baseball analytics, machine learning, or just curious about what agentic coding looks like in practice, I'd love to hear what you think. And if you've been sitting on your own side project idea for years and haven’t given agentic AI a shot — maybe it's time to dust it off. The tools are better than you think.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Aries and Azure - my cats' adoption story","description":"How I met the cutest orange cats in the five boroughs","slug":"/blog/my-cats","date":"2024-09-24T12:00:00.000Z","tags":["Cats","Pets"],"draft":false,"cover":{"childImageSharp":{"gatsbyImageData":{"layout":"constrained","backgroundColor":"#484838","images":{"fallback":{"src":"/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/f249e/kitties.png","srcSet":"/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/66e1d/kitties.png 175w,\n/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/6360a/kitties.png 350w,\n/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/f249e/kitties.png 700w,\n/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/4654c/kitties.png 1400w","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},"sources":[{"srcSet":"/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/a8ad0/kitties.avif 175w,\n/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/1c9d4/kitties.avif 350w,\n/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/3672f/kitties.avif 700w,\n/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/a5027/kitties.avif 1400w","type":"image/avif","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},{"srcSet":"/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/ec239/kitties.webp 175w,\n/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/7c524/kitties.webp 350w,\n/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/0c01c/kitties.webp 700w,\n/static/bbd0666ebedbcbe60271eb6026141299/3b521/kitties.webp 1400w","type":"image/webp","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"}]},"width":700,"height":671}}}},"html":"“Meooooow!” a tiny orange and white kitten demanded at me with a screechy yet adorable meow. He wanted something but I couldn’t figure out what.
\nI was at Meow Parlour, a charming cat cafe in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. I had just quit my job where I had been very stressed out. To seek respite from being freshly unemployed, I came to Meow Parlour with my girlfriend Sara.
\nI thought I’d be the one chasing after kittens to pet them and make them play with toys. Instead, the tables were turned with a little kitten demanding something from me.
\n“What is it, little guy?” I asked while reaching out to pet him. The kitty was on top of a tower and looking eagerly at me.
\nInstead of responding verbally, the kitty started climbing on my arm. He carefully trekked across my arm and onto my lap, then onto the ground. He must’ve been too afraid to jump off the tower and had asked me for help to get down. The orange kitten rubbed his head on my hand and leg, and my heart slowly began to melt.
\n“Aw, I’m gonna take this one home,” I said jokingly to Sara.\n“Let’s ask the people at the desk if they’re up for adoption!” she replied.
\nMy stomach turned at the thought of this massive responsibility. I had entertained the idea of getting a cat for a long time, but I never felt quite ready for the commitment, let alone now while freshly unemployed.
\nBut this time... it felt different. It felt like the cat was the one choosing me. I figured it wouldn’t hurt to ask an employee.
\n“The orange and white one? Oh, that’s Azure. And he has a twin brother from the same litter too - that one named Aries. We adopt bonded kittens in pairs, so if you’re interested in applying to adopt, you would have to take both of them.”
\nHold up... both of them?! The thought of committing to adopt one cat was scary enough, but two?
\nNevertheless, I gave in to their cuteness. Within a few days, I was approved to bring Aries and Azure home as the newest additions to my family.
\nOn the very first night home with the kitties, I was woken up in the middle of the night. It was a cat.
\nAzure? I figured it’d be the demanding kitty asking for my attention again. When I turned on my phone’s light, I was surprised to see it was actually Aries.
\nIf you look up “orange cat” in an encyclopedia, it should have a picture and description of Aries. He is as orange as an orange cat can get.
\nAt night, Aries often wakes me up, demanding cuddles. He would rub his head and wet mouth all over my face, gently plop his body next to me, and fall asleep with his little head on my shoulder.
\nDuring the day, Aries stirs up trouble. He’s especially shameless when it comes to eating. He would eat random scraps from the floor and try to snatch food from plates. Sara made an Instagram reel of Aries trying to steal pizza from me. As of today, it has nearly two million views and one hundred thousand likes - the true mark of a little orange terror!
\nDespite being a funny menace at times, Aries is so amazingly affectionate and caring. Azure and Aries are the perfect cat brothers that deeply love each other, and I cannot picture having one cat without the other.
\nBoth cats have become truly special parts of the family. At first, I was afraid of committing to having them. Now, I can’t picture my life without them.\nThe kitties have helped to foster a happier life at my home with myself and my girlfriend. I have a new job now, and I still feel stressed from time to time. But whenever I pet those two adorable orange kitties, all my problems slowly fade away.
\nTo this day, Azure makes his demands known by meowing at me, every single day, just like our first ever meeting at Meow Parlour. There’s no better feeling than coming home to Aries and Azure eagerly greeting me, headlined by Azure’s signature screechy “meooooow!”
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"The future of NFTs is here - and it’s on the racetrack","description":"Why ZED RUN will set the standard for NFTs of the future.","slug":"/blog/zed-future-nfts","date":"2021-06-27T12:00:00.000Z","tags":["ZED RUN","NFT"],"draft":false,"cover":{"childImageSharp":{"gatsbyImageData":{"layout":"constrained","backgroundColor":"#080818","images":{"fallback":{"src":"/static/87f3959e1e3e17c69ce46327438078a4/49256/zed-future-of-nfts-thumbnail.png","srcSet":"/static/87f3959e1e3e17c69ce46327438078a4/b7cf4/zed-future-of-nfts-thumbnail.png 175w,\n/static/87f3959e1e3e17c69ce46327438078a4/66023/zed-future-of-nfts-thumbnail.png 350w,\n/static/87f3959e1e3e17c69ce46327438078a4/49256/zed-future-of-nfts-thumbnail.png 700w","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},"sources":[{"srcSet":"/static/87f3959e1e3e17c69ce46327438078a4/b3a8e/zed-future-of-nfts-thumbnail.avif 175w,\n/static/87f3959e1e3e17c69ce46327438078a4/19f32/zed-future-of-nfts-thumbnail.avif 350w,\n/static/87f3959e1e3e17c69ce46327438078a4/003e1/zed-future-of-nfts-thumbnail.avif 700w","type":"image/avif","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},{"srcSet":"/static/87f3959e1e3e17c69ce46327438078a4/a17fe/zed-future-of-nfts-thumbnail.webp 175w,\n/static/87f3959e1e3e17c69ce46327438078a4/afe45/zed-future-of-nfts-thumbnail.webp 350w,\n/static/87f3959e1e3e17c69ce46327438078a4/922d1/zed-future-of-nfts-thumbnail.webp 700w","type":"image/webp","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"}]},"width":700,"height":484}}}},"html":"Stella Artois just announced a partnership with a horse racing platform. No, it was not with the Kentucky Derby or the Belmont Stakes. It was with a purely digital, NFT horse racing platform called ZED RUN.
\nNFTs and horse racing? How in the world do those things go together? Click on the video below and see for yourself:
\n
ZED RUN has a slick, futuristic, and almost alien vibe — yet it clearly has the mechanics of real-life horse racing.
\nThere are a plenty of interesting NFT projects out there, but ZED is my personal favorite. Not only are the races captivating to watch and the horses fun to collect, the game brings a fresh take on sports gambling to the NFT metaverse. They have created an NFT with a remarkable amount of utility.
\nIn this article, I’ll explain why it’s time for you to start paying attention to ZED RUN — and why I believe it will set the standard for NFTs of the future.
\nPlease keep in mind that this article is NOT meant to be investment advice. These are my personal opinions and should solely be used for informational purposes!
\nAt first glance, you might think ZED RUN’s concept of horse racing is the same as virtual horse racing at casinos. However, ZED is an entirely different beast for one key reason: you actually OWN the digital horses that you bet on. Being a ZED stable owner is probably the closest we’d get to living the life of a Kentucky mogul!
\nLike other NFT assets, ownership of ZED horses is verifiable on the Ethereum blockchain. The horses are divided into tiers, which are generally predictive of their racing ability. The top tier (Z1 Genesis Nakamoto) can fetch nearly $40,000 on the secondary market, but lower tiers sell for a more affordable price of a few hundred dollars.
\nAs a comparison, the average cost of a real-life racehorse is about $76,000. However, that doesn’t include the time and money to keep it alive and train it for the racetrack. Thankfully, as of now, ZED horses don’t need to be fed, cannot die, and are ready to kick butt on the racetrack right after birth.
\nSpeaking of birth, stable owners can actually breed their horses to produce offspring — which results in a brand-new horse NFT being minted on the blockchain. If an owner has a male horse, they can charge a stud fee for other owners to sire offspring. If an owner has a female horse, they get to keep the offspring that is born.
\nThe racing ability of a bred horse is heavily influenced by its parents, but there are “mutations” that could lead to highly variable outcomes. This means that amazing racers can still be bred from cheaper horses, which gives people with less money an opportunity to score a big-time performer.
\nIn the real world, owning, breeding, and racing horses has only been accessible to only the wealthiest of degenerates. But now in the metaverse, it’s available to ALL degenerates.
\nUltimately, this is the direction I believe NFTs will move towards in the future: mirroring ownership of real-life assets to make them accessible to a wider audience.
\nIn the ZED RUN racing engine, the outcome of each race is randomly generated. However, each horse’s innate racing ability heavily influences their odds of winning. After enough races, it becomes apparent which horses are studs and which are donkeys.
\nSince the stats are completely visible and the game dynamics are just transparent enough to analyze, it opens up a whole new realm for finding betting edges. Just like sports bettors can use statistics to gain an edge, ZED stable owners can perform their own analyses to profit from racing. Races are visually entertaining AND have real money at stake, which makes them as exciting to me as a real-world sports betting event.
\nWhen it comes to betting and competing, I believe there is a greater element of fairness and transparency in ZED RUN than in most sports. Sure, there can be bugs that lead to wonky race results — but as long as the ZED platform itself is well implemented, it’s near impossible for players to cheat the system.
\nReal-world horse racing certainly has its own set of codified rules, but they are much harder to enforce. The racing community just had a major scandal where Medina Spirit, the winner of the 2021 Kentucky Derby, tested positive for steroids.
\nIn the ZED universe, there’s no need to worry about horses on PEDs that create an unfair competitive environment. As an added bonus, there’s also no need to worry about unfortunate horses getting drugged — or any other form of animal cruelty.
\nMost people can look at ZED RUN’s graphics and understand how it can be fun and entertaining. ZED has also done a great job of gamifying their NFTs on top of the traditional NFT collecting experience.
\nBut here’s what separates it from other NFT projects: a winning horse is a productive asset. Due to the nature of the game, a horse that consistently wins on the racetrack (or fathers a lot of baby horses) brings in very real cash flow. A winning horse is an asset that brings you cash, which is inherently valuable, just like owning equity in a company. You can’t really say the same for all NFTs out there.
\nThere’s an excellent article written by Tony Yiu that plays devil’s advocate for crypto assets. He believes that “an asset with no cash flows can have value — but that value is highly subjective, heavily affected by emotions, and volatile as there is nothing tangible underneath to serve as its anchor.”
\nI’m very bullish on crypto assets, but I think he’s right. In order for crypto assets, especially NFTs, to become more than just speculative investments in the eyes of the general public, there needs to be more tangible benefits, whether it’s in the form of cash or other added utility.
\nMy rebuttal to his article is ZED RUN, an NFT that actually can bring you the dough. Smart bettors have and will continue to make money from ZED, just like in sports betting and DFS. As long as that opportunity exists in the game, winning ZED horses are productive assets.
\nIn the future, I see NFTs looking LESS like weird memes and MORE like cash-generating assets such as ZED horses.
\nIn my opinion, ZED RUN is an example of an NFT project done right. Other projects should look to add utility — as well as gamifying the experience and promoting a community — to bolster the long-term value of the project. There will always be a place for collecting NFTs, especially as works of art. But I have my doubts about NFTs truly going mainstream unless they find a way to add real-world utility.
\nZED is on track (pun somewhat intended) to do that for real-life horse racing. It’s currently the gold standard NFT project in my book. ZED RUN is a glimpse into the future of NFTs — where tangible assets are slowly transformed into digital ones and the lines between the two worlds are ever blurred.
\nBefore signing off, I’ll leave you with a glimpse of what that future could look like:
\n"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Publish your work, even if you don’t have an audience","description":"What’s the point of having a blog?","slug":"/blog/publish-your-work","date":"2021-06-01T12:00:00.000Z","tags":["Blogging"],"draft":false,"cover":{"childImageSharp":{"gatsbyImageData":{"layout":"constrained","backgroundColor":"#383838","images":{"fallback":{"src":"/static/c09dfcb02b59467f57017d9fce106153/91ccc/laptop.jpg","srcSet":"/static/c09dfcb02b59467f57017d9fce106153/8c4ea/laptop.jpg 175w,\n/static/c09dfcb02b59467f57017d9fce106153/ddb3d/laptop.jpg 350w,\n/static/c09dfcb02b59467f57017d9fce106153/91ccc/laptop.jpg 700w","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},"sources":[{"srcSet":"/static/c09dfcb02b59467f57017d9fce106153/94c2d/laptop.avif 175w,\n/static/c09dfcb02b59467f57017d9fce106153/e5e45/laptop.avif 350w,\n/static/c09dfcb02b59467f57017d9fce106153/f4066/laptop.avif 700w","type":"image/avif","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},{"srcSet":"/static/c09dfcb02b59467f57017d9fce106153/2bd3b/laptop.webp 175w,\n/static/c09dfcb02b59467f57017d9fce106153/bccff/laptop.webp 350w,\n/static/c09dfcb02b59467f57017d9fce106153/5d47d/laptop.webp 700w","type":"image/webp","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"}]},"width":700,"height":426}}}},"html":""Life for the people on Novus revolves around one thing, the digital horse racing league, Zed Run. It is the world's premiere sporting event. In fact, for many, it's more than
— Chris Ebeling (@iamChrisEbeling) May 26, 2021
just a sport, it's a way of life, because Zed Run allows anyone to own and race digital horses." 🏇🚀🌔 pic.twitter.com/CHiCyMAttA
It’s been one year since I started this blog. When I first started, I wasn’t exactly sure what to write about or how much time to devote to it. I just wanted to scratch an itch to get my ideas out to the world.
\nIn the back of mind, I was hoping to grow a big online audience over time. The problem is that I’ve only been publishing once every month or two, which simply isn’t enough content to reach that goal.
\nSo, what’s been the point of having a blog? And why am I, a nobody with less than 300 Twitter followers, telling you to start publishing things too?
\nOver the long run, there are plenty of benefits to enjoy from creating content, especially when it comes to writing. With some hard work and a little bit of luck, you just might stumble across new opportunities in the future that you never would expect today.
\nFirst and foremost, publishing an article is like writing a piece of software. Just like code is meant to execute a specific task on a computer whenever you want, an article serves a specific purpose whenever someone reads it — whether it’s to tell a story or answer a question. By publishing an article, you’re able to serve a purpose at scale. Instead of telling a story again and again to people you meet, you can write it up once and let them all read it whenever they want.
\nThis is especially powerful in the age of the internet, where your ideas can reach complete strangers at any given time. All you have to do is write once for your ideas to be explained to anyone a countless number of times.
\nMy furthest-reaching article was published on Medium: “Why it’s time to invest in NBA Top Shot\".
\nI had less than 30 Medium followers at the time, but it garnered over 10,000 views on the platform. This is a tiny number in the big picture of internet content, but I at least made some kind of impact on people with that article. I sure couldn’t have done that by word-of-mouth alone.
\nIn the end, I wrote down my thoughts once and avoided explaining my thoughts 10,000 different times.
\nOr at least that’s what I tell myself. I feel like I still had to explain NBA Top Shot to my mom about 10,000 different times.
\nAlbert Einstein once said, “If you can’t explain it simply, you don’t understand it well enough.” I could not agree more with that statement.
\nPart of the reason why writing is so damn difficult is that it’s a constant battle with yourself. You have to write down everything you know AND format it in a coherent argument to your readers. When you factor in what disagreers and internet trolls might say to counteract your points, you have to play devil’s advocate against yourself — and that’s when you realize that maybe, just maybe, you don’t know what the hell you’re actually talking about.
\nWhen I have an idea for an article, I go in with a list of notes about the subject and feel good about what I want to write. “I’ve done all of the homework already,” I think to myself. “Putting it into words should be a breeze!”
\nNope. Not at all. In fact, I end up doing more research and learning during the actual writing process.
\nThat’s the beauty of publishing online. It forces you to step up your game and sharpen the quality of your work for others to understand.
\nIn the case of my NBA Top Shot article, it helped me think deeply about the pros, cons, and future of the platform. When I ultimately decided it made sense to me, I took the plunge to invest in Top Shot moments, months before everyone else hopped on the hype train. And yes, I still believe in the massive long-term potential for the platform despite the current bear market.
\nThe process of putting your thoughts into words can be extremely difficult, but the level of understanding you achieve when you’re done is totally worth it.
\nIn the past, I’ve written about a variety of subjects including baseball, startup ideas, and sports betting. It turns out that my blog posts showcased my thinking and writing, which helped me land exciting opportunities with two different startups over the last few months.
\nThis was especially important to me at the start of the year. I had just decided to leave my previous job at the Yankees and had what was probably my third quarter-life crisis. There was a period of several months where I was anxiously searching for a new direction for my career.
\nBy figuring out what to write, I had to think carefully what I wanted to do and what I was most passionate about. This helped me clarify the next steps to take in my career.
\nIt was a massive bonus that my writing caught the attention of Jonathan Bales and Peter Jennings, which helped me land my current job with Lucky Trader. I’m very fortunate to now be working at the intersection of my lifelong passions for technology and sports, as well as my newfound curiosity for NFTs and cryptocurrencies.
\nDuring the COVID era, it’s been especially hard to network in-person, whether it’s finding new opportunities or meeting interesting people. However, a lot of networking can be replicated online, oftentimes with greater reach and efficiency. I believe that publishing your work online is hands-down the best way to creating your own luck in finding new opportunities.
\nHere’s what Balaji Srinivasan, the former CTO of Coinbase and General Partner at Andreessen Horowitz, has to say about that:
\n\nMany founders aren’t hiring from Harvard. They’re hiring from Twitter.
— Balaji Srinivasan (@balajis) April 29, 2021
I’m not one of those people that discount the value of college degrees, especially the ones from top schools. But in the competitive world that we live in today, having tangible work to show in public can help you stand out from the noise.
\nThe last benefit of publishing online? It can be a lot of fun.
\nI often experience writer’s block and can be busy with my day job (which is a classic excuse, but I bet you can relate!) There is a lot of inertia that stops me from getting started, but when I do get the ball rolling, the process becomes very addicting.
\nIt’s an intoxicating experience to see your work take form into a coherent product. When I write an especially solid paragraph, I get very excited even if no one else has read it yet. If someone (aka anyone) reacts positively to it online, I get a massive adrenaline rush.
\nMost of us spend most of our time consuming, whether it’s on Netflix, Instagram, or Tik Tok. It gives us the momentary, easy hits of dopamine that keep us going through the day. But the creative process provides a much more meaningful sense of fulfillment that can last much longer.
\nI’ve officially been writing online for a year now. After spending some time reflecting on this decision, I believe it’s been one of the most rewarding of my life. I may not reach my goal of building a huge online audience anytime soon, but I still gain a tremendous amount of knowledge and satisfaction by writing for myself at my own pace. As a result, I really recommend creating work publicly, even if you don’t care much about followers.
\nNeedless to say, the same benefits apply to other forms of work besides writing, whether it’s publicizing your code on GitHub or sharing your ideas verbally on a podcast.
\nGoing forward, I’ll take my own advice and start publishing more frequently. I plan on starting my own “crypto journal,” where I’ll document the weird and disruptive NFT/crypto projects I’m discovering during my new journey with Lucky Trader.
\nIn a few short months, I’ve gained a lot of new ideas and insights that I would’ve loved to have known six months ago. It’ll be a fun project to document my learning process and hopefully help others that are new to this space.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Why you are betting on the wrong NBA teams","description":"Sometimes, it's the teams you least expect.","slug":"/blog/betting-nba","date":"2021-04-21T12:00:00.000Z","tags":["Sports Betting","Data Science"],"draft":false,"cover":{"childImageSharp":{"gatsbyImageData":{"layout":"constrained","backgroundColor":"#383848","images":{"fallback":{"src":"/static/d6313de6ea7b104b43e098b798dd102a/ad56f/giannis.jpg","srcSet":"/static/d6313de6ea7b104b43e098b798dd102a/f7b1a/giannis.jpg 175w,\n/static/d6313de6ea7b104b43e098b798dd102a/7ba70/giannis.jpg 350w,\n/static/d6313de6ea7b104b43e098b798dd102a/ad56f/giannis.jpg 700w","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},"sources":[{"srcSet":"/static/d6313de6ea7b104b43e098b798dd102a/00dc1/giannis.avif 175w,\n/static/d6313de6ea7b104b43e098b798dd102a/7e92b/giannis.avif 350w,\n/static/d6313de6ea7b104b43e098b798dd102a/6ffe1/giannis.avif 700w","type":"image/avif","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},{"srcSet":"/static/d6313de6ea7b104b43e098b798dd102a/51bad/giannis.webp 175w,\n/static/d6313de6ea7b104b43e098b798dd102a/6cac9/giannis.webp 350w,\n/static/d6313de6ea7b104b43e098b798dd102a/66be7/giannis.webp 700w","type":"image/webp","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"}]},"width":700,"height":699}}}},"html":"You might be surprised to learn that the NBA teams that win the most games do NOT win bettors the most money!
\nIn this post, I will analyze NBA betting data and run simulations to show you why this has historically been true — and explain which teams you should bet on instead. You won’t even need basketball knowledge to successfully implement this strategy.
\nAlthough you don’t need to be an NBA expert, this post assumes you have some knowledge of sports betting concepts and terminology. If you aren’t familiar with them, check out this short guide for a primer.
\nLet’s start with the basics — when two NBA teams play each other, one team is considered more likely to win (the favorite) while the other more likely to lose (the underdog). If you were to place a moneyline bet on the underdog, you’d win more money than if you had bet on the favorite; after all, you deserve a bigger reward for picking the less likely winner. Based on the payouts set by the sportsbook, you can calculate the implied probability of each team winning the game.
\nIn theory, the implied probability of winning your bet should be identical to the probability of your team winning the game. In reality, sportsbooks don’t set their odds that way. Instead, they invite action on both sides so the amount of money at stake is balanced, thus reducing their risk and maximizing their profit.
\nFor example, let’s say the Milwaukee Bucks (the team with the best record last year) are playing against the New York Knicks (a team with… not the best record). If bettors rush to bet on the Bucks, the sportsbooks may get nervous about paying out a lot of money if the Bucks win. So they decide to reduce their payout for the Bucks and increase their payout for the Knicks, thus incentivizing more money to be placed on the Knicks’ side.
\nGiannis Antetokounmpo, the star of the Milwaukee Bucks, possibly excited about winning a bet. Source: Wikimedia.org
\nThese payouts could swing such that implied probability of a Bucks win is 90%, when in reality their “true win probability” might only be 80%. In this case we have a value bet, where it would be profitable in the long-run to bet on the Knicks.
\nOf course, the big challenge that all bettors face is finding the true win probability of each bet AND figuring it out before everyone else does. It’s impossible to know these win probabilities for certain, but can we find games where the implied odds are more likely to be inefficient? This could help us spot opportunities for value bets.
\nFirst things first, we need a large dataset for our analysis. We’ll need data for the following:
\nI ended up using Sportsbook Review, a site that aggregates historical betting odds from many different sportsbooks. From there, I found an open-source repository with a script that can effectively scrape betting data from any historical NBA game. I modified the script to also scrape the final score of each game and to run for an entire NBA season, which I did for three regular seasons: 2017–18, 2018–19, and 2019–20 (only including games before the pandemic suspended the season). Here’s a snapshot of what the dataset looks like:
\nThere are a lot of different ways to place bets on NBA games, like moneylines, point spreads, point totals, etc. For the sake of this post, I’ll focus exclusively on the profitability of moneylines. Similarly, there are many different sportsbooks you can use to bet. For the sake of simplicity, I will focus exclusively on Pinnacle, which is regarded as having some of the most accurate odds in the industry.
\nThe goal here is to examine the implied odds of past NBA games and determine if they’ve been historically accurate. If there are big discrepancies, then there could be an opportunity to make money.
\nI calculated the implied win probability for each bet based on their moneyline odds. You might notice that the sum of the win probabilities in each game is greater than one, which shouldn’t be possible! However, sportsbooks do this on purpose to profit from the total betting action. To adjust for this, I normalized the win probabilities to add up to one, which results in the REAL implied win probability for each bet.
\nNext, I created “bins” so that all bets with similar implied win probabilities are grouped together. Why do this?
\nSuppose we have a bet with an implied win probability of 11.7% (or +755 moneyline). It’s hard to find many other bets that have this exact moneyline. But if we include it in a bin of all bets from 10% to 15%, then we have quite a few data points to look at in each bin. We then calculate each bin’s actual win rate (number of real-life wins divided by total number of games) and expected win rate (average implied win probability of all bets in the bin).
\nFrom there, we can take the difference between the actual win rates and expected win rates — which I’ll call the residual — and see if there are any large discrepancies. Here are the results when dividing all bets into 20 bins. Each bin covers an implied win probability interval of about 5 percentage points.
\nThe b_in column shows the probability interval in decimal form. The _co_unt column shows the total number of bets in each bin. Notice that the counts are symmetric across the middle row, with the exception of the (_0.456, 0.5] interval having 12 games (24 bets) with exactly 50/50 odds.
\nIt turns out that the implied win probabilities (and therefore the moneylines) are pretty accurate! In general, the actual and expected win probabilities don’t differ by more than 5%. However, there is a slight negative correlation between residual and expected win rate. It appears that huge underdogs have been slightly underrated, while huge favorites have been slightly overrated.
\nNow, it’s time to put my (imaginary) money where my mouth is. In the last section, we found that huge underdogs might actually be slightly undervalued. What happens if we simulate betting on underdogs over the last three NBA seasons? We’ll backtest with actual game results and Pinnacle moneylines from the 2016–17 to 2019–20 seasons.
\nI wrote a function that simulates a betting strategy and tracks our winnings over time. We first must set a bet amount, which will be $100 every time for the sake of simplicity. We must also set a “win probability threshold,” which determines the underdog teams we’ll bet on. If we set it to 0.5, then we bet on any team with a win probability less than 50% (aka the underdog of every game). If we set it to 0.2, then we only bet on the big underdogs of lopsided games, where the win probability is less than 20%.
\nWe’re ready to go now. What happens if we run the simulation with a threshold of 0.5, which places a $100 bet on the underdog of every game?
\nOh no, we lost money! We lost $3,903 after three seasons, with an especially brutal stretch from bets 600 to 1,000.
\nIt’s worth noting that the expected value of every bet is negative. As I mentioned earlier, the sportsbook takes a cut of every bet through the virgorish or “vig.” Pinnacle has a vig of about 2–3%, which is actually quite low. Any strategy that is profitable must be at least 3% better than break-even!
\nNext, let’s try the exact opposite strategy and bet on the favorite of every game. After a tiny tweak to my simulator function, we get the following results over time:
\nWhat an absolute nightmare! With this strategy, we lost $10,352. Comparing this graph with the previous one, we can see that the trends move in opposite directions (as they should), but the winnings are completely outweighed by the magnitude of the losses.
\nFinally, let’s test our hyped-up strategy of betting on huge underdogs. What happens if we run the simulation with a threshold of 0.2?
\nWe make a total profit of $7,182!! Not bad at all!
\nOne really important caveat is that we lost nearly $3,000 before making profits afterwards. In order to survive with this strategy, you will need to have a large bankroll and/or make small-sized bets. Otherwise, it’d be easy to go on a long losing streak and completely run out of cash.
\nIf you’d like to check out my complete Jupyter notebook, you can find it here.
\nBased on this analysis, there has historically been a profitable strategy by betting on big-time underdogs. You could think of every bet as a lottery ticket with a high likelihood of losing but a large upside.
\nI do think it’s feasible that these underdogs are relatively “underpriced” while the heavy favorites are “overpriced.” There may be a psychological explanation for a lot of bettors; people might want to win more often at the cost of long-term monetary returns!
\nIn summary, this underdog strategy requires patiently enduring long losing streaks, placing small-sized bets, and having a big enough bankroll. However, if the bottom-feeders of the NBA can pull off enough rare Ws, you just might be able to make cash.
\nAnd by the way, the Knicks already beat the Bucks this season, despite having just a 12% implied win probability for that game! Perhaps a sign of things to come.
\nBasketball. Cryptocurrencies. Trading cards. Markets.
\nAs different as they may seem, there’s a single product that combines all of them: NBA Top Shot, a blockchain-driven platform where you can buy and sell NBA highlights.
\nYou can think of it as a mashup of Bitcoin and physical sports cards. Instead of trading cards, however, you trade video highlights from exciting “moments” in NBA games.
\nBut wait! Can’t we just watch the same highlights on YouTube for free? Sure we can. We can also print an image of a Honus Wagner baseball card for free… but good luck trying to sell that copy for $3 million! The value of each digital moment comes from its authenticity and scarcity, which makes it very similar to commodities like gold, Bitcoin, artwork, and trading cards.
\nTop Shot’s early adoption has been no joke. Their marketplace sees $1 million in sales on a daily basis now. The product has raked in over $20 million in sales, most of which came in the last month alone. Dapper Labs, the company behind Top Shot, has already been funded by VC giants like Union Square Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, as well as NBA players like Andre Iguodala, Spencer Dinwiddie, and Aaron Gordon.
\nThere are still plenty of uncertainties about the platform, and I admit that the concept seemed crazy and silly to me at first. But now, I believe NBA Top Shot is here to stay.
\nPlease keep in mind that this article is NOT meant to be investment advice. These are my personal opinions and should solely be used for informational purposes!
\nI believe that NBA Top Shot will become a popular marketplace, if not THE marketplace, for NBA fans to become:
\nThere are a lot of people interested in doing at least one of these things. And let’s not forget that there are billions of NBA fans around the world.
\nTo me, this system sounds like a stock market but with NBA players, as it provides an indirect way to bet on the success of NBA players. This is appealing to investors, traders, and collectors alike, who may flock to young stars like Zion Williamson or to generational talents like Lebron James — both of whom had moments that just sold for $100,000 each!
\nIn theory, a similar system already exists with physical sports memorabilia, but that system is riddled with the many issues of physical assets. Collectors have to preserve the physical condition of their cards, deal with the hassle of shipping, and take risks buying from unknown eBay vendors. All of these factors make physical cards rather illiquid assets. Having purely digital collectibles that sit on the blockchain could change all of that.
\nHow quickly are NBA Top Shot’s moments growing in value? To find out, I decided to take a peek at my own collection. For reference, I bought my first pack in September 2020. Since then, I have bought two more packs and a handful of moments from the marketplace.
\nOne of my most valuable moments is a highlight of the reigning MVP, Giannis Antetokounmpo, slamming down a dunk during the most recent NBA playoffs.
\nI bought this moment from the marketplace for $16 back on December 5.
\nI’m not gonna lie… I’m pretty cheap, so paying that much for a video clip worried me for a while. In the end, I pulled the trigger and was left wondering how much it’d be worth someday.
\nTurns out, I didn’t have to wait long to get an answer. NBA Top Shot gained SERIOUS momentum over the following month. While writing this blog post on January 23, I decided to check the most recent sales on the marketplace of other copies of my Giannis moment. Here’s a screenshot of the top three sales of all time, followed by the most recent sales on the marketplace:
\nWow!! Taking the moment’s serial number into account, my moment was suddenly worth about $350. That’s a 2,088% return in about seven weeks.
\nThe next day, I decided to take another look at the marketplace, just to make sure all of the numbers were accurate before publishing my blog post:
\nUmmm… EXCUSE ME?? Turns out my numbers were wrong! The sales doubled in price in less than two days. My moment is now worth about $750, bringing the total return to 4,588%.
\nTo answer the original question: the moments are gaining value VERY quickly. My collection is still small-time compared to the ballers that have invested hundreds of thousands of dollars. Nevertheless, it’s clear as day that the value of Top Shot moments have skyrocketed.
\nOf course, like any asset in the world, there are reasons to be skeptical.
\nTop Shot moments fall under the category of non-fungible tokens (NFTs), which still face plenty of scrutiny. Can a purely digital asset hold its value over the long-term without something physical or tangible to back it up? This is a big question facing cryptocurrencies and is especially applicable to NFTs.
\nThere’s also the matter of NFTs that have fizzled in the past. Before building NBA Top Shot, Dapper Labs created CryptoKitties, which is famous for its meteoric rise as well as its sudden decline. Today, CryptoKitties are worth a fraction of what they were at their peak.
\nThere are valid concerns about NBA Top Shot. But if you’re feeling FOMO from not being one of the first to buy into the craze, then this might actually be good news. If it weren’t for the risks, who knows how much higher these moments would be selling for!
\nJonathan Bales, who recently purchased a Ja Morant moment for $35,000, said quite simply: “If it were easy and obvious, everyone would be doing it.” After all, not many people gambled early on Bitcoin, but the ones who did are reaping the rewards handsomely today. The downside is limited, but the upside is through the roof.
\nAt the end of the day, any asset is worth as much as someone is willing to pay for it. And so far, people have been willing to pay a LOT for NBA Top Shot moments.
\nGiven the current trends of our modern world, as well as its unique blend of so many popular interests, I very much believe that this product is different. To bet against NBA Top Shot would be to bet against the NBA, cryptocurrencies, and card collecting all at once — which to me is a major uphill battle!
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"The Car Accident","description":"First, I got into a car accident. Then, I got into YC.","slug":"/blog/car-accident","date":"2020-11-17T12:00:00.000Z","tags":["Startups","Life Lessons"],"draft":false,"cover":{"childImageSharp":{"gatsbyImageData":{"layout":"constrained","backgroundColor":"#584838","images":{"fallback":{"src":"/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/10a6f/car-accident.jpg","srcSet":"/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/37d55/car-accident.jpg 175w,\n/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/0e6d9/car-accident.jpg 350w,\n/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/10a6f/car-accident.jpg 700w,\n/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/9d298/car-accident.jpg 1400w","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},"sources":[{"srcSet":"/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/ea096/car-accident.avif 175w,\n/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/d9301/car-accident.avif 350w,\n/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/23e81/car-accident.avif 700w,\n/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/b929c/car-accident.avif 1400w","type":"image/avif","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},{"srcSet":"/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/93fe5/car-accident.webp 175w,\n/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/320a2/car-accident.webp 350w,\n/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/e1299/car-accident.webp 700w,\n/static/84c11234cafcb18366f1cb65af73f858/64ed2/car-accident.webp 1400w","type":"image/webp","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"}]},"width":700,"height":525}}}},"html":"Three years ago today, I got into a car accident.
\nI was in a rental car with my former co-founders, Fil and Matt. We were on a highway in Mountain View headed to our final interview with Y Combinator. The interview was supposed to start in just ten minutes, and we were anxious about cutting it so close after a really ill-advised run to Taco Bell.
\nI made a silly, last-minute navigation error. Fil made a sharp, last-second turn to try to make the highway exit. Next you we knew, we swerving towards the exit like this:
\n…and then BAM!! We crashed right into another car in the lane beside us. We narrowly avoided a second collision with a highway guardrail (which would’ve been a disaster) and screeched to a halt beside it.
\nWe sat there in complete shock for a few seconds. We looked at each other, and thankfully, there wasn’t a scratch on any of us. The other driver was pissed as hell, but thankfully, he was also completely fine.
\nBut my head was spinning from processing what just went down. Is this real life? This CANNOT be happening to us right before the biggest interview of our careers…
\nFil stepped up to deal with the aftermath of the collision with the other driver, which meant that Matt and I had to make a last-ditch effort to conduct our YC interview.
\nWe jumped out of the car and sprinted down the highway ramp, sticking out our thumbs at passing cars like idiots trying to hitchhike a ride. Everyone turned us down. We called a Lyft that somehow got to us quickly and dropped us off at YC headquarters, arriving “only” about ten minutes late. Amazingly, the YC partners were running behind schedule, so we made it right on time.
\nMatt and I burst into the interview room, sweaty and out of breath, and tried to conduct the interview as calmly as possible while pretending nothing was wrong. After several back-and-forths, the CEO of YC, Michael Seibel, noticed something was off. He asked, “Where is your third cofounder?”
\n“Uhhhh… we actually got into a car accident on the way here and he’s taking care of the car right now.”
\nThe YC partners were shocked. They told us to get out of there to handle that situation first and rescheduled the interview for a couple of hours later that day.
\nAfter Fil re-joined us and we finally had time to breathe and rest in the lobby, we stopped giving a damn about the interview. Hey, we already made it this far… we’re still friggin alive!! All of our earlier stress about the interview evaporated and was replaced by a strange sense of calmness.
\nWe went back into the room a second time and nailed the interview.
\nMonths later, Michael confirmed that our smooth recovery from the car accident actually helped us win them over as resilient startup founders. I think he was really onto something there… it felt like there was a “car accident” on a daily basis while running an early-stage startup!
\nThree years later, I look back and laugh at how the world was seemingly going to end during those agonizing twenty minutes. That accident could’ve seriously injured us all, but instead, it helped us get into an awesome startup accelerator and breathed new life into our company. We almost made a company-altering or even life-altering mistake, yet somehow, things ended up for the better.
\nI had two big takeaways from the day, and I find them as relevant as ever in 2020.
\nFirst, we can never take our health for granted, as it can be taken away from us at any moment (especially after eating at Taco Bell. Nothing good ever happens after eating at Taco Bell).
\nSecond, anything can go wrong at any moment and it’s often out of our control — but it is within our control to bounce back and turn setbacks into new opportunities.
\nWe were lucky enough to sprint away from that car with our lives, and even luckier to walk away with a chance to take a startup to greater heights.
\nDisclaimer: There are important risk factors that should be considered when crashing a car before an interview. Results may vary.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Top resources for breaking into baseball","description":"I’m sharing a list of my favorite resources that helped me join an MLB front office.","slug":"/blog/baseball-resources","date":"2020-08-03T12:00:00.000Z","tags":["MLB","Resources"],"draft":false,"cover":{"childImageSharp":{"gatsbyImageData":{"layout":"constrained","backgroundColor":"#588828","images":{"fallback":{"src":"/static/cc26624c3f5b4513cad0f2247b73257d/6db8b/baseball.jpg","srcSet":"/static/cc26624c3f5b4513cad0f2247b73257d/4afcb/baseball.jpg 175w,\n/static/cc26624c3f5b4513cad0f2247b73257d/d2cc3/baseball.jpg 350w,\n/static/cc26624c3f5b4513cad0f2247b73257d/6db8b/baseball.jpg 700w","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},"sources":[{"srcSet":"/static/cc26624c3f5b4513cad0f2247b73257d/4845b/baseball.avif 175w,\n/static/cc26624c3f5b4513cad0f2247b73257d/6a610/baseball.avif 350w,\n/static/cc26624c3f5b4513cad0f2247b73257d/eb2d8/baseball.avif 700w","type":"image/avif","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},{"srcSet":"/static/cc26624c3f5b4513cad0f2247b73257d/10109/baseball.webp 175w,\n/static/cc26624c3f5b4513cad0f2247b73257d/b5c5d/baseball.webp 350w,\n/static/cc26624c3f5b4513cad0f2247b73257d/dddf4/baseball.webp 700w","type":"image/webp","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"}]},"width":700,"height":493}}}},"html":"Compared to the past, MLB front offices are now open to more job seekers. But we’ve still got a long way to go before anyone, regardless of their background, can really pursue that opportunity. You can check out my full thoughts about this in Part 1 of my blog post!
\nFor those of you out there interested in working in baseball, I’m sharing a list of my favorite resources that helped me join an MLB front office. This is far from an exhaustive list, but I found these books, websites, online personalities, and other resources to be tremendously helpful for learning from today’s greatest baseball minds.
\nWithout further ado, let’s get at it!
\nAnalytics have taken the game by storm, and teams are now heavily focused on statistical analysis and machine learning to answer all types of baseball questions. That can cover anything from projecting players’ future stats to deciding optimal in-game strategy.
\nFrom my experience, teams rely heavily on SQL for querying data from relational databases and R for analysis and modeling. Sometimes teams also use Python, although it doesn’t seem as popular as R in the industry for now.
\nThere are a lot of great textbooks and online courses dedicated to sports analytics, machine learning, statistics, etc. Here are a handful I’ve used to learn foundational skills:
\nAs you might’ve noticed, my list leans heavily on analytics and technology. I may be a bit biased because I really like those things… but modern technology has revolutionized decision-making in companies of all industries. MLB teams are no exception to that.
\nIf you want to work in sports, I highly recommend that you stay up-to-date with the latest trends in sports technology. Top teams are always looking to tech for a competitive edge. Check out my latest post about another data revolution that’s coming to baseball — and how the sport is going to change once more.
\nOf course, this list doesn’t cover all of the amazing resources and talented people that are out there in our industry. If you think there’s anything cool that I missed, I’d love to hear about it. And if you have any questions for me, feel free to leave a comment or send me a DM on Twitter!
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Breaking into baseball","description":"The modern-day front office has changed.","slug":"/blog/breaking-into-baseball","date":"2020-08-02T12:00:00.000Z","tags":["MLB","Resources"],"draft":false,"cover":{"childImageSharp":{"gatsbyImageData":{"layout":"constrained","backgroundColor":"#4888c8","images":{"fallback":{"src":"/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/86361/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.jpg","srcSet":"/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/3f1b3/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.jpg 175w,\n/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/3961c/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.jpg 350w,\n/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/86361/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.jpg 700w,\n/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/f22f4/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.jpg 1400w","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},"sources":[{"srcSet":"/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/bf026/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.avif 175w,\n/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/53a94/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.avif 350w,\n/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/3f7ae/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.avif 700w,\n/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/072eb/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.avif 1400w","type":"image/avif","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},{"srcSet":"/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/48048/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.webp 175w,\n/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/d8098/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.webp 350w,\n/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/c73ff/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.webp 700w,\n/static/e7ce49a07f3063aaa404f0b9b32b5dea/83b0f/yankee_stadium_opening_day_fly_over.webp 1400w","type":"image/webp","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"}]},"width":700,"height":500.00000000000006}}}},"html":"This year’s been incredibly tough for so many people, and it’s no exception for folks in the baseball industry. Despite all of negativity in the news these days, I still feel grateful to be here. After all, it’s a rare opportunity to be working in baseball!
\nWhen I was a kid, I always thought that working for MLB teams was reserved for insiders — whether they were top-tier players after they hung up their cleats, or business tycoons working closely with billionaire team owners. I didn’t have any relatable role models to look up to, so those jobs just seemed out of reach.
\nAs many sports fans know, the story of Michael Lewis’s Moneyball and the Oakland A’s helped turn everything upside down. Before then, baseball seemed like a “boys’ club” of insiders; the game had become content with using the same strategies and systems over and over again.
\nEverything changed when people heard about the inefficiencies of baseball and the sports world in general. That gradually paved the way for outsiders, especially math nerds that could barely hit the ball out of the infield, to bring fresh perspectives. It wasn’t easy at first; many outsiders were met with skepticism and resistance from the establishment. But eventually, the new ideas won over and helped revolutionize the way the game is played today.
\nDespite the gradual acceptance of outsiders into the game, front offices are still employing very few minorities, women, and others of different socioeconomic backgrounds. For me, this is an area that hits close to home. Even though it was a huge step forward to see outsiders gain acceptance in baseball, I had a hard time going for a job that still didn’t seem like was meant for me.
\nAfter a while, an influential role model helped me make the leap: Farhan Zaidi, the current president of baseball operations for the San Francisco Giants. He’s a person of color and MIT grad that turned down the rigor of academia for the ballpark office — and has been absolutely crushing it ever since. It was so encouraging to see people I could personally relate to like Farhan reach the pinnacle of the baseball world.
\nI’m very grateful to have gotten my baseball operations opportunity with the forward-thinking Yankees, who are still the only team to have hired two female assistant GMs as of 2020. During the difficult times of the George Floyd protests, we discussed how we could do our part in supporting people of color. One method discussed is to offer mentorship to minorities in order to break into the industry. I’m ready to do my part to help. After all, as a Chinese American that’s pitched just one inning of Division 3 baseball (but with a 0.00 ERA), I know how hard it is to succeed as an outsider amongst outsiders.
\nFor that reason, I’m sharing a list of resources that have been incredibly helpful on my journey to working in baseball — which I still maintain and use today. You can find it in my next blog post by clicking here.
\nIt’s far from a comprehensive list, but I hope it’ll be a launchpad for anyone interested in breaking into the industry. At the very least, I hope it’ll educate fans are changing the sport today and expand the diverse fanbase of our pastime!
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"How to simulate your startup idea","description":"How do you start a business from scratch?","slug":"/blog/how-to-simulate-startup-idea","date":"2020-06-28T12:00:00.000Z","tags":["Startups","Technology"],"draft":false,"cover":{"childImageSharp":{"gatsbyImageData":{"layout":"constrained","backgroundColor":"#586888","images":{"fallback":{"src":"/static/2aa46082170dcc973995977c0e961756/bbda7/laptop.jpg","srcSet":"/static/2aa46082170dcc973995977c0e961756/8c618/laptop.jpg 175w,\n/static/2aa46082170dcc973995977c0e961756/eb152/laptop.jpg 350w,\n/static/2aa46082170dcc973995977c0e961756/bbda7/laptop.jpg 700w","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},"sources":[{"srcSet":"/static/2aa46082170dcc973995977c0e961756/50167/laptop.avif 175w,\n/static/2aa46082170dcc973995977c0e961756/5a8a9/laptop.avif 350w,\n/static/2aa46082170dcc973995977c0e961756/87045/laptop.avif 700w","type":"image/avif","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},{"srcSet":"/static/2aa46082170dcc973995977c0e961756/81b0f/laptop.webp 175w,\n/static/2aa46082170dcc973995977c0e961756/bfc62/laptop.webp 350w,\n/static/2aa46082170dcc973995977c0e961756/51d89/laptop.webp 700w","type":"image/webp","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"}]},"width":700,"height":466}}}},"html":"How do you start a business from scratch? In fact, how do you make any dream come true when you’re starting from zero? Maybe you’ve already done some homework by talking to potential customers or others that already made it. But now it’s time to get cracking and make your idea a reality.
\nThis is really intimidating if you don’t have the means to quickly get off the ground. Whatever it is that you’re trying to launch, you might feel like you first need to:
\nBack in 2017, my co-founders and I faced these classic startup problems when we started Point. Our vision was to automatically reply to emails using the latest NLP technology… but we didn’t have much experience in machine learning or any money to hire people. We weren’t even sure if a product like this would be possible to build or if it was just science fiction.
\nWhat should we have done next? Invest years into hardcore R&D, hoping that it’d result in a tech breakthrough? Pivot to a completely different business idea?
\nNeither sounded appealing. It’s a fatal mistake to spend too much time building something the market doesn’t need. At the same time, there’s only so much talking and strategizing you can do without actually building something. While we were racking our brains for a solution, we heard about a hot new startup called X.ai and another option emerged: simulate it.
\nX.ai built Amy Ingram, an AI personal assistant, to automatically set up meetings over email. Users could just cc Amy on an email thread, and “she” would handle the back-and-forth with the other person to schedule a meeting. Amy sounded a LOT like a real person, and people back in 2014 praised her “humanlike tone” and “eloquent manners.”
\nWhat an amazing piece of tech, right!? What most people didn’t realize about Amy was that behind almost every email was an actual human. X.ai hired a team of human “AI trainers” to handle much of the emailing and scheduling, and they’d already raised tens of millions of dollars to do it.
\nDoes that make X.ai a sham? As misleading as they seemed, the “AI trainers” kinda did live up to their job titles. By responding to emails, they were creating a robust dataset that could be used to train a fully-automated machine learning system. They were basically “faking” the Amy Ingram experience until they could actually “make it.”
\nOur team was shocked by X.ai’s bold yet ingenious business strategy. I remember mulling it over in the shower one day when it suddenly hit me… what if we did the same thing?
\nNormally, MIT nerds like us love to put our heads down and build bots. This time, we decided to “simulate” our business idea by faking the AI before committing to building it.
\nHere was our master business plan:
\nWe rounded up ten users, ranging from acquaintances to business mentors. We built a system that would forward our users’ newly-received emails to our own staging area. Whenever an email arrived that needed a reply, we would manually(!) write up a reply and save it as a draft in the user’s inbox, ready for them to review and send.
\nPoint’s drafting service in action #machinelearning
\nSo how did this go? In a lot of ways, better than I ever imagined.
\nOur first set of users paid us for each draft that Point “wrote” and gave us positive reviews. We suddenly had a business idea with some validation and a small (but non-zero) revenue stream.
\nFrom there, we were excited to push for our first round of funding. We told investors about our “simulation” results, and to our big surprise, they really loved it. We checked the boxes for the entrepreneurial hustle and innovative thinking, and as a result, we received our first investments from a VC firm as well as Y Combinator.
\nWith money in the bank, we followed through with the next steps. We started marketing efforts and hired people via Upwork to reply to our users’ emails. X.ai had their “AI trainers,” and we now had our “Point operators.” With an actual business in motion, pre-seed investments, and a place in the prestigious YC accelerator, it felt like we made it big and won the lottery!
\nOf course, not everything was so simple. It was a logistical nightmare to teach our operators how to properly send emails and assign them to work shifts around-the-clock. The YC partners hated that we were paying so much money just to make our product function.
\nOn top of that, we were in a moral gray area of being an AI company without real AI yet. It was a very uncomfortable position to be in, even though putting on appearances has been a big part of the Silicon Valley culture, especially when it comes to machine learning hype. One particularly bad example was Engineer.ai, who claimed to use AI to automatically build apps but was just using humans to do it. It used the AI hype to attract customers and over $30 million in funding! It’s one thing to openly acknowledge using humans as part of your business model, but it’s a completely different story to hide it for hype.
\nWe ended up taking YC’s advice and let go of our operators to build a fully-automated product. We had about three months to pull it off before our Demo Day. Despite the daunting challenge, we successfully morphed our email drafting service into EasyEmail, a Chrome extension that used machine learning to auto-complete sentences in Gmail. It was a much easier task to automate than writing entire emails, yet still provided nice value to users. If that product sounds familiar, it’s because Google released their own implementation called Smart Compose just a few months after we already launched 😒
\nCompeting with Google in AI was not a fun time. But hey, at least we were onto something there!
\nThere’s only so much you can accomplish by strategizing and talking to people. That’s still the best first step to take, but real progress happens by doing, learning, and oftentimes failing. Our email drafting “simulation” was incredibly important. It allowed us to test a business idea that seemed very far-fetched, establish ourselves as a real business, and prove ourselves as startup founders to investors. We fulfilled our dreams of launching a tech startup, raising a seed round, and selling a real product, even though the company didn’t work out perfectly in the end.
\nBut be careful. At the end of the day, whatever business you start must still provide value. You might be able to get small wins at first by faking it, but reaching success at scale will require you to build an excellent product or service that fits your market’s needs. Use the simulation as an idea validator and not a replacement. Also, being honest and transparent is key if you want to build a good reputation, which tends to be great for winning long-term customers and being happy in general.
\nSo what happened to X.ai? To their credit, X.ai worked hard on an incredibly difficult machine learning problem. But nowadays, they’re out-competed by Calendly. Forget about fancy algorithms — Calendly wins scheduling by just letting people share a link! Instead of having to raise tens of millions of dollars, it was bootstrapped by its founder and now makes over $30 million in annual revenue.
\nNow THAT’S an example of a real success story: no hype, no BS, just pure value made by a normal person with a dream.
"}},{"node":{"frontmatter":{"title":"Why I’m starting a blog","description":"Hello World.","slug":"/blog/why-blog","date":"2020-05-28T12:00:00.000Z","tags":["Blogging"],"draft":false,"cover":{"childImageSharp":{"gatsbyImageData":{"layout":"constrained","backgroundColor":"#282828","images":{"fallback":{"src":"/static/9bda1c5f41a8ceccbe4642c062f6f560/9398b/highway.jpg","srcSet":"/static/9bda1c5f41a8ceccbe4642c062f6f560/8c618/highway.jpg 175w,\n/static/9bda1c5f41a8ceccbe4642c062f6f560/eb152/highway.jpg 350w,\n/static/9bda1c5f41a8ceccbe4642c062f6f560/9398b/highway.jpg 700w","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},"sources":[{"srcSet":"/static/9bda1c5f41a8ceccbe4642c062f6f560/50167/highway.avif 175w,\n/static/9bda1c5f41a8ceccbe4642c062f6f560/5a8a9/highway.avif 350w,\n/static/9bda1c5f41a8ceccbe4642c062f6f560/bc4f6/highway.avif 700w","type":"image/avif","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"},{"srcSet":"/static/9bda1c5f41a8ceccbe4642c062f6f560/81b0f/highway.webp 175w,\n/static/9bda1c5f41a8ceccbe4642c062f6f560/bfc62/highway.webp 350w,\n/static/9bda1c5f41a8ceccbe4642c062f6f560/74bac/highway.webp 700w","type":"image/webp","sizes":"(min-width: 700px) 700px, 100vw"}]},"width":700,"height":467}}}},"html":"I thought I had walked away from social media for good.
\nFor the longest time, I didn’t want to broadcast my thoughts on the Internet. Doing that felt distracting and narcissistic. Even worse, if I did post my honest thoughts online, would people think less of me for my opinions?
\nI was content with being low-key and off the web. But a failed startup and a global pandemic was all it took to change my opinions completely!
\nI learned more from working on a startup than anything else in my life, and I felt the need to share my learnings with others. In the meantime, like billions of others around the world affected by COVID-19, I consumed digital content more than ever while stuck at home. The disaster of the pandemic reminded me that our time is short and life is valuable, yet there’s an entire digital world still intact. If I could impact just one other person through the web, putting in the work would be worth it. Why should I keep my ideas to myself if they have a chance to influence or help people?
\nI’ve thought of plenty of good reasons, but three stand out to me:
\nI can live with my ideas not gaining any traction. I feel rewarded just by creating content and putting my thoughts onto paper (or webpages), and not hearing anything at all would actually be useful feedback. In the best case, other people will learn from my writing and find it amusing. In the worst case, I’ll have some ridiculous stories to show my future grandkids.
\nBesides the fear of public judgement, this was another huge roadblock for me to start writing. I noticed that most successful online personas have their own niche topic of expertise, but I had a hard time choosing just one thing, nor did I want to write exclusively about one thing.
\nI decided to just write about anything that (1) really piques my interest (2) makes for quality content and (3) I’m able to share publicly. Who knows — maybe there’ll be some weird topic I write about that will become my niche one day — but that’ll never happen if I don’t get started!
\nIn all likelihood, yes! Even if you don’t feel like it’s true, I’m willing to bet that you have unique stories and insights that few others have but are eager to consume. Have you ever told a story to a friend that made them laugh or intrigued? If so, there’s at least one stranger out there that’d have the same reaction.
\nThe cool thing is that sharing ideas is now easier to do at scale than ever before. The world is consuming online content like crazy, and all it takes is a click of a button to join that community.
\nIf you’re thinking about starting a blog or are just starting out like me, I’d love to exchange ideas with you. If not, I’d be happy to connect anyway — leave a comment or send me a DM on Twitter!
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