Like in every professional sport, the margins between winning and losing in Major League Baseball are extremely thin. A single trade, free agent acquisition, managerial decision, or injury can play a significant role in whether a team makes the postseason or misses out by a game. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that every team seeks to find even the slightest competitive edge over their opponents.

As MLB front offices have evolved over the last several years, analytics have become a focal component of how rosters are built, prospects are scouted, and competitive advantages are gained. While front offices across the league have hired analysts, data scientists, and PhDs to keep up with this trend, clubs often make agreements with analytics companies as a supplement to their internal operations.  

Because these analytic companies often have deals with multiple clubs within the same league, front offices are understandably concerned they are losing a potential competitive edge. To combat this, many clubs attempt to gain some level of exclusivity with these entities.

Just in the last decade, analytically forward front offices including the Tampa Bay Rays, Chicago Cubs, New York Yankees, and Houston Astros had exclusive arrangements with college programs to access their player’s TrackMan Data. MLB eventually halted this practice due to potential NCAA violations, but it goes to show how much teams crave to get ahead of their peers. According to Evan Drellich’s Winning Fixes Everything, the Houston Astros even considered buying TrackMan outright as they built up their analytics department under former GM Jeff Luhnow.

Therefore, it’s not surprising that there is some natural tension in these agreements between MLB clubs and analytical companies. The clubs don’t want to risk losing their competitive edge and the companies don’t want to limit their services to one particular club.

We saw this tension come to fruition recently when the Philadelphia Phillies filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in Philadelphia against Zelus Analytics and its parent company Teamworks Innovations. In the suit, the team claimed Zelus attempted to sell components of the Titan Exchange platform to teams within their division, violating the agreement they had with the Phillies—and in effect, undermining its competitive advantage. 

Titan Intelligence is made by Zelus and produces analytical models that help teams evaluate players and assist with roster construction, including player contracts and strategy. The Phillies paid Zelus $1.875 million from 2022-24 to use its Titan platform and those contracts included “division-exclusive” licenses that prevented Zelus from sharing data with any other National League East club.  Following the 2024 season, the agreement contained option for the parties to extend the deal through the 2025 campaign if the Phillies chose to do so.

This is where the conflict emerged. Zelus stated the team stalled to exercise its $725,000 option for 2025 and that they did not have exclusive rights to individual components of the platform, which had been marketed to every team in the sport for months. The Phillies alleged that upon attempting to exercise their option, Zelus responded by attempting to amend the agreement so that they would be able to sell the platform in to more teams around the league, including to the team's division rivals.

The Phillies claimed they still possessed the “division-exclusive license,” and sought a temporary restraining order that would block any deal that would violate the team’s agreement with the firm to sell to just one team in each of Major League Baseball’s six divisions, in addition to unspecified compensatory damages for breach of contract. 

The team argued that without court intervention, Zelus and Teamworks would have continued to try to get around their exclusivity agreement by selling parts of its platform to other teams, including its division foes, causing “irreparable harm” to the front office’s competitive advantage. 

In response, the Zelus and Teamworks claimed that the lawsuit was merely "pretext for [the Phillies] to leverage the convenient imminency of the start of the 2025 MLB season to further its efforts to negotiate a price reduction on a renewal contract.” They contended the Phillies could not claim irreparable harm or a loss of competitive advantage because one of the club’s assistant general managers proposed a financial discount during the negotiations if the Phillies were to permit other teams to purchase components of the platform.” Finally, Zelus and Teamworks argued the Phillies’ contention of “irreparable harm” was based on speculation about competitive infringements.

“[The Phillies] have failed to provide any actual proof of irreparable harm by way of concrete evidence,” Teamworks attorneys wrote. “And for good reason, because no such proof exists.”

Judge James Crumlish III of the Philadelphia Court of Common Pleas sided with the defendants and denied the Phillies’ injunctive request, stating that the team failed to “show that its claims of injury were anything but entirely speculative.”  Moreover, Crumlish wrote that the Phillies failed to demonstrate “requisite diligence in seeking relief,” suggesting they implied this was an emergency situation when it wasn’t. Crumlish, however, will allow the Phillies' breach of contract lawsuit against Zelus to proceed.

Obviously frustrated by the lack of immediate injuctive relief, the Phillies issued a statement that read: “The Phillies are disappointed with the Court’s decision, which contains numerous errors of fact and law,” and “We look forward to prevailing on the merits of our case in front of a Philadelphia jury.”

On the other side, a Teamworks spokesman said, “We are pleased the court has denied the Philadelphia Phillies’ effort to prevent rival organizations from accessing our advanced analytics products,” and “While we cannot comment on specific details of ongoing litigation, we remain confident we have acted in full compliance with our agreements and look forward to an appropriate resolution.”

Moving forward, this case will proceed without the temporary restraining order in federal court. It will certainly be interesting to see if the parties are willing to take this dispute to trial or ultimately end up settling out of court. More broadly, given that the Phillies are only one of Zelus' MLB clients, it certainly adds another layer of intrigue to the resolution of this case.

 Brendan Bell is a 2L at SMU Dedman School of Law. He can be followed on Twitter (X) @_bbell5