Show IH: Ninth Inning Email — spoiler-free MLB game recaps by email
Ninth Inning Email is a free service that sends you a short email the morning after your team plays, with a spoiler-free recap and a link to the highlight reel. It exists for people who watch games on delay or check scores in the morning and don't want push notifications, sports apps, or Twitter ruining the result before they can press play.
I built this because I love in France and was tired of looking for Mariners highlights and getting the game spoiled.
How it works
- Sign up with magic link, pick your teams
- Every morning, one email per team that played the previous night
- Subject line and preview text are spoiler-safe ("Last night's Giants recap" — not the score)
- Click through to the recap when you're ready to know
Stack
Next.js 15 on Cloudflare via OpenNext, Supabase for auth + Postgres, Brevo for transactional email, MLB Stats API for game data. Two Cloudflare crons: one daily scheduler builds tomorrow's wake list, one runs every 15 min and only does work when a game is expected to finish in the window. Out-of-band SLO alarms via Supabase pg_cron so I get paged if either cron stops firing.
What's working / what's hard
I originally built this for myself. The hardest part has been scaling it for multiple users as that comes with things like better testing, error logs, alerting, etc. I am trying to balance "build a system that is resilient and doesn't need manual daily monitoring" and "if other people see this, they should have a great experience and know that it works".
What I'd love feedback on
- Is the spoiler-free framing the right hook, or is "morning game recap" the bigger draw?
- If you're a baseball fan: would you actually use this past the first email? What would make you unsubscribe?
- The tip jar is the only monetization — am I being naive about that holding up?
