DePodesta was largely portrayed as the stereotypical Ivy League nerd in the book—perpetually crouched behind the screen of his omnipresent laptop—but at the same time he was given tremendous credit for guiding the A’s through statistical analyses rather than relying solely on conventional scouting methods.

“The point of Moneyball was that you run baseball like a business,” Smith says. “You take all the information possible when making a decision.”

Encouraged by the business aspect of the game that the book highlighted, the number of Ivy graduates attempting to enter baseball front offices increased dramatically. Even before Moneyball reached the bestseller list, however, DePodesta and Hill—along with Theo Epstein, a 1995 Yale graduate and current Red Sox General Manager, and Mark Shapiro, a 1989 Princeton graduate and current Cleveland Indians General Manager—were all well-entrenched in the game. They have now become the examples for the many Ivy Leaguers aspiring to find a way into baseball.

“I think it has to do with the change in dynamics of the game,” says Hill of the growing demand for finance-savvy front office personnel. “Owners are now running teams like Fortune 500 companies. There’s a lot of money now involved in everything that we do.”

The type of statistical analysis used by the A’s and examined in Moneyball produced a winning franchise with a comparatively meager payroll. As players’ salaries and owners’ expenditures skyrocketed, finding undervalued assets became a key focus of all baseball executives.

DePodesta and Epstein quickly became the poster boys for this new-age approach to baseball. Both have demonstrated the effectiveness of using in-depth statistics in conjunction with traditional player evaluation methods, such as scouting.

Dan Shaughnessy, a columnist with The Boston Globe who regularly covers the Red Sox, has observed the transformation of front office operations around the game and does not see it reversing course any time soon.

“It’s clearly more than a trend,” says Shaughnessy of the more-statistics minded approach used by many teams. “It’s the way the business has gravitated.”

And it seems to be a conglomerate of Ivy graduates leading baseball in that direction.

“A well-rounded education that makes you think critically is important,” says Smith about successfully running a franchise. “It doesn’t necessarily need to be an Ivy education, but thinking critically is important.”

But using the Ivy education to break into baseball may not provide the same immediate financial reward as in other arenas.

Following his graduation in June 2003, Noffsinger watched those around him go off to become consultants or investment bankers with prospects of six-figure salaries. Noffsinger, meanwhile, trudged off to work at the Arizona Fall League to pursue his baseball dreams.

“You’ve got to stay humble,” says Noffsinger about how best to deal with less than glorious starting positions in baseball.

“You have to make so many sacrifices in this game,” Hill adds.

Sacrificing potential wealth is something Smith knows all about. After his junior year at Yale, he landed a prestigious internship in Hawaii to study weather patterns. But as much as he tried, he couldn’t get baseball out of his mind.