Solutions flew to Long Beach to attend the Area Code Games, a regional scouting event for high school players. E Solutions was armed with software inspired by what Morizio had seen while fixing the Yankees' program. "We walked by the press box and told some reporter that we had a newfangled scouting system," says Morizio. Within 30 minutes E Solutions was surrounded by scouts from the Oakland Athletics and the San Diego Padres. A month later company engineers rewrote the program to match specific requests made by both teams. ("Nobody in baseball wants anyone else to know how they work," says Nicholas.) In early 2003, Moneyball was released, and a growing number of teams--including Boston, the Cleveland Indians, and the Los Angeles Dodgers--started hiring Wall Street consultants tohelp them crunch numbers and select players at the right price. E Solutions was already developing a reputation for excellent customer service--scouts could call project manager Mike Lane to request tweaks and the changes would be made before they got off the phone. By the beginning of the 2003 season the company had signed up six clubs.

About 80% of ScoutAdvisor looks and feels the same for every team. For less than $75,000 a year, a team gets 14 modules that show data such as game-day reports (a reconstruction of players' performances in the organization's major- and minor-league games), characteristics of international players, and contract information for all MLB players. IBM's PROS provides similar modules, but sells them separately at prices ranging from $35,000 to $50,000. A PROS solution