Phillies Try to Block NL East Rivals From Analytics Software

The Philadelphia Phillies are suing an analytics company and its owner over an alleged contract breach the team claims aids its division rivals. 

The team filed a lawsuit on Friday against Zelus Analytics and its parent company Teamworks Innovations claiming they are attempting to sell components of their platform to teams within their division, violating the agreement they had with the Phillies—and in effect, undermining its competitive advantage. 

The Phillies are seeking 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 harm suffered by the Phillies cannot be adequately remedied by monetary damages alone,” the lawsuit says. “The competitive advantage secured through the division exclusivity agreement and six-team limitation is unique and cannot be precisely quantified.”

The Phillies have made the playoffs the past three seasons and lost the 2022 World Series to the Houston Astros. 

Titan Intelligence, which is made by Zelus, produces analytical models that help teams evaluate major and minor league players for trades and assist with roster construction, including player contracts and strategy. The lawsuit says the Phillies and Zelus had multiple agreements in 2022 and 2023 that allowed the team to have the exclusive use of Titan within the National League East division. The team has paid more than $1.75 million since 2022 for Titan and will pay $725,000 for the 2025 season. 

Zelus was founded by two former Dodgers front office employees and was acquired by Teamworks in September 2024. 

Professional sports teams routinely make agreements with analytics firms, but it’s common for firms to have deals with multiple teams within the same league, which creates a natural tension, as every team wants the same thing: a competitive edge. 

The Phillies claim they had a “division-exclusive license,” which prevented Zelus from making deals with other teams in the NL East and limited them to six total among MLB teams, one per division. 

In the lawsuit, the Phillies say Zelus and Teamworks tried to change the exclusivity rights to their agreement in 2024 in a proposal that would allow the companies to sell individual components of Titan to all 30 teams, including products geared toward roster and game intelligence. In exchange, the Phillies would give up their exclusivity with Titan for a price discount. 

The Phillies declined and raised concerns about losing their exclusivity to Titan while doing so, the lawsuit states. The team alleges that without court intervention, Zelus and Teamworks will continue 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. 

The Phillies did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Phillip Berger, who is representing the team in the case, declined to comment. An attorney for Teamworks and Zelus did not immediately respond to a request for comment.