Michael Morizio Steps up to the Plate
The Future of our Passtime

By Jay Winchester

For Michael Morizio, the 2006 World Series between the eventual world champion St. Louis Cardinals and the American League champion Detroit Tigers was a special event. It wasn’t because he’s fan of either team (he’s not), and it wasn’t because he loves baseball (he does). No, what made that series so special was that both teams, along with four other Major League Baseball (MLB) play-off participants, use his company’s product, ScoutAdvisor. That’s six teams out of a total of eight. For those keeping score at home, Morizio’s company hit .750 during that year’s play-offs.

This year, only three of the eight play-off participants are ScoutAdvisor Corporation (www.scoutadvisor.com) clients. However, while this year’s play-off numbers might be down, the company’s regular season average was up. In all, 13 of the 30 teams in MLB use the scouting and decision-making tool developed by Morizio and his team, a .433 average. There are many superstar talents playing at the major league level who would gladly take that number for their averages. And the business continues to grow. The company recently made its initial foray into Japan, where baseball has been a popular sport since 1920, by signing the Osaka ORIX Buffaloes as a client.

If it’s true that baseball is a game of numbers, it’s no wonder that so many teams use Morizio’s product. Essentially, ScoutAdvisor is a centralized database of baseball performance- and financial-related statistics for every player in the majors and the minors. Its customizable reporting features mean that team scouts and front office personnel receive information that is essential to the decision-making involved in player development and acquisition. After all, in baseball the name of the game is highly skilled, highly motivated players. In today’s baseball climate those types of players represent a significant financial investment for ownership. Mistakes are costly, so clubs want to maximize their chances for success at fielding a winning team. As Casey Stengel, who achieved managerial glory with the New York Yankees and experienced managerial misery with the expansion New York Mets, put it, “I couldn’t have done it without my players.”

The company is just the latest hi-tech endeavor for Morizio, who has been involved in technology businesses since the glory days of Lotus 1-2-3, which would be circa 1983. “While employed at Raytheon, I began writing simple, then later, complex applications, mostly in DBASE III, RBASE, Lotus 1-2-3 and Lotus Symphony,” Morizio recalls. “I was later hired by Lotus as a QA Engineer to build test programs. I became Manager of Quality Assurance, where I often was brought in for customer consultations.”

He discovered that there was much about the position he enjoyed. Eventually, he moved into a role of Global Sales Engineer, which combined his engineering and people skills. It started a life on the road that took him around the world covering such global accounts as PricewaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte & Touche, FedEx, Coca-Cola and others. He wound up being promoted to Global Account Executive for Lotus, and then for IBM when it purchased Lotus Development in 1995.

His role within IBM enabled him to work with key IBM business partners, one of which was E Solutions Corporation here in Tampa. Eventually, Michael took an executive position with the Tampa web development and hosting company. “While at E Solutions, we developed huge software applications for some of these same global accounts I had been covering while at Lotus and IBM,” he recalls. One of those applications was ScoutAdvisor.

Sometimes, the entrepreneurial spirit is born when an executive looks at one of the company’s products and realizes there is more potential inherent in that product than in any of the company’s other ventures. When this is the minority point of view, events sometimes dictate that a departure is in order, both for the executive and the product. This was the destiny of Michael Morizio and ScoutAdvisor. “Entrepreneurs have strong beliefs about a specific market opportunity and are willing to accept a high level of personal, professional and financial risk to pursue that opportunity,” Morizio says. “I believed that ScoutAdvisor was a jewel in the crown of E Solutions that needed to be further cultivated and promoted within some other vertical markets. Properly nurturing and growing that business meant extricating the ScoutAdvisor product line and staff out of the protection of the parent company into its own private entity.” Seven months ago, both Morizio and the product were extricated from E Solutions. “This took a great deal of foresight, focus, planning, acceptance of risk, and a lot of prayer on my part,” Michael says.

Today, the company employs four full-time employees and six contractors, outsourcing any other company activities not associated with its core business. The firm operates out of three locations: its headquarters here in Tampa, and offices in Boston, MA, and St. Paul, MN. Its prospects for the future appear sound, with trends for net income indicating a 19% net profit margin after the first nine months of independent operations. While the company’s vision is all about being the leader in decision-making software for professional sports organizations in the world, its mission statement might seem at odds with that. It reveals that the mission of ScoutAdvisor Corporation is “…to pursue a Godly excellence in business by using our time, talents and testimonies as good stewards of Christ, through a software company founded on biblical principles.”

To help ensure that he fully understands the practical business, personal and spiritual implications of such a mission, Morizio, a devout Christian, attends the monthly meetings of The C12 Group. Morizio explains the group and its function, saying, “C12 is geared toward helping CEOs and other key business players to lead thriving profitable businesses with a commitment to a Biblical perspective, coupled with like-minded peer counsel and accountability.” A national organization, the Tampa Bay chapter of C12, is its oldest, largest and most active chapter.

Michael counts the local C12 Area Chair, Scott Hitchcock, as one of his primary mentors, something he thought was long gone from his professional life. “Until joining C12, I had thought the ability to have a mentor at my age a lost opportunity,” he says. “To the contrary and to my astonishing surprise, I have a new and vibrant mentoring relationship with Scott.” He also counts the pastor of his church, also named Michael, as a mentor. Both are key relationships for him. “In each case, these men poured themselves out to help me,” he says. “Their examples have caused a yearning in me to do the same for others.” Currently, Michael is involved in mentoring roles with his two sons, two key employees and a close personal friend.

When not on the road Morizio describes his favorite seat as one on a Delta 25D, where he is free to “go into my computer” without having to answer the phone. Morizio passes time in Bible study; playing with the family dogs, Cha Cha and Rosie; reading and socializing. “I can sum up my favorite extracurricular activities this way,” he says. “Good friends, fine wine, and something with garlic.” Was it mentioned that Morizio’s heritage is Italian?

Perhaps that explains his fondness for another activity closely associated with Italians: opera. Michael sings…he just doesn’t do it for a living, at least not anymore. But his love affair with song began early on. “I was a singer as a boy, and at 18 knew I had a gift that was very different from those of my peers,” he recalls. “It seemed that singing opera was my gift, so off I went.” He graduated from music school, received a full scholarship to the Boston Conservatory to earn a Masters in Music with a concentration in Voice/Opera, and embarked on a singing career. However, that career was sidelined slightly by the birth of his first child at the ripe old age of 24. “I decided that I’d better learn to find a line of work that had more sustaining power.” That led him into technology.

Nevertheless, he soon found that music held more than one attraction for him. “I met Nancy, the most beautiful soprano- and soprano voice- to happen upon the Boston scene during my tenure there,” Michael says. “I was divorced, and Nancy was soon to be my new bride. We have both sung many solo engagements as well as duet engagements since.” They continue to make beautiful music together.

Morizio finds music to be spiritually invigorating. “Music is a thing of beauty that consists of the opposing elements of sound and silence, organized in time through tempo and meter,” he declares. “The form of music that is most spiritual in my opinion is the human voice. What else can send those shivers up your spine as when you hear a good singer perform?”

Looking at his life, and his profound love of music, Morizio testifies that his most heartfelt desire is that expressed in Psalm 140:33: “I will sing to the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my God while I have being.”

To those seated in the box seats and bleachers of life, that sounds like a hit.