Major League Baseball (MLB) holds a powerful and unique place in the cultural fabric of America, and continues to endear itself to millions of fans across the country. The organization’s commitment to the people and communities that support it is as strong as their fan’s love for the game. Its Pitch, Hit, & Run (PHR) competition is a free one-day event that encourages and supports young boys and girls to play and enjoy the game. Local events are held at all 30 MLB ballparks, giving children the exciting opportunity to showcase their abilities one the same field that they watch their favorite home team players on.
PHR has received increasing attention and participation over the years, and needed a website to support its growth and live up to the brand standards of the MLB. With a purpose-driven company mantra and breadth of technical expertise, Orases was perfectly aligned to partner with the MLB PHR.
Creating a digital experience as rich as the communities it serves.
Orases knew the PHR website would need to support an extremely high volume and diversity of users, and worked closely with the MLB to define a product experience based on the needs of both users and site administrators. We developed a fully-responsive website with rich functionality that enables site visitors to quickly and easily search for local competitions, securely create personal profiles and register their children for competitions, or apply to host PHR events — from any mobile device or computer. We added custom display features such as a tip button to promote PHR’s sponsor, the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company, and encourage people to subscribe to their mailing list. This had the dual benefit of giving the MLB an opportunity to measure and increase program participation.
With highly specialized knowledge in backend management processes and efficiencies, we provided a custom system that eased the workload for local PHR competition hosts and site administrators. We focused on delivering a management system that made all critical processes easy, from creating new seasons, to adding or editing competitions, to collecting data from registration forms, to tracking program participants and their advancement status. Bearing in mind the community spirit of MLB’s PHR competition, we also added functionality to facilitate communication between event hosts and participants, ensuring that overall, our product didn’t just provide a better experience for users — it provided one that was ideal.
