Moneyball Film Overview
Given the quality of the book (awesome), the pre-release buzz (overwhelmingly positive), and the release of the movie coinciding with October (MLB playoff time), I was definitely looking forward to seeing the film “Moneyball". With these high expectations going in, I am happy to report that the movie did not disappoint. Although there were a few deviations from the book that had to be made in order to make this a more captivating film adaption, the primary ethos of Michael Lewis’s work is expressed throughout.
At the heart of the movie is Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane’s (played aptly by Brad Pitt) struggle to field a playoff caliber team despite the monetary disadvantages his small-market team faces. Set after the 2001 season in which his A’s made the playoffs, Beane must replace three of his better players who went on to sign elsewhere as free agents. On the surface this appears to be a difficult task, as Beane must deal with an owner that doesn’t want to increase the team’s payroll and his legion of scouts who evaluate players in an archaic manner. The current method of evaluating players is based on intangibles such as a scout’s instinct, how the players look and act, and the feel that certain prospects have all the makings of a “five-tool player”. We learn through flashbacks that Beane was once praised by scouts as a future star and “five-tool player”. Unfortunately, his baseball career flamed out and he never lived up to the lofty expectations. This provides him with the recognition that scouts instincts are often wrong.
With the help of a young Ivy League grad named Peter Brand (Beane gets him from the Cleveland Indians to be the assistant GM), Beane begins to realizes there is a more tangible way to predict performance. Relying on statistics, equations, and algorithms, Brand projects that the A’s can meet the win total of the previous year’s squad despite losing the aforementioned star players. Brand stresses to Beane that the key for a low payroll team like the A’s is to find players that the rest of baseball undervalues, and obtain them at a reasonable price. The plan is to sign players who have defects, be it age (David Justice) or injury (Scott Hatteberg), and utilize them due to their ability to get on base. Simply stated the more players get on base; the more runs they will score. The more runs they score, the more games the A’s will win.
In one of the more entertaining scenes in the movie Beane lays out the new framework of bringing in flawed players with high on-base percentages to the old guard scouts, who immediately voice their collective disagreement. The force and will of Beane’s personality in this scene is impressive and entertaining, as despite the long standing relationship he has with many of the scouts, he realizes Brand’s computer generated stats are the wave of the future. Getting the A’s scouts and manager Art Howe to think outside the box proves difficult at first, and the team struggles for a majority of the first half of the 2002 season.
Despite the initial struggles of the club, Beane and Brand still believed that over the course of a 162 game season their philosophy would win out. After shipping off a few undesirables, making a key move at the trade deadline, and getting the team to buy into his on-base way of thinking, Beane’s makeshift squad begins to turn things around. I doubt that even he could have predicted the A’s would go on to win a record setting 20 games in a row, which proved to be the apex of the season for the team. After the team is eliminated in the first round of the playoffs for the second consecutive year, the so-called experts question the “Moneyball” philosophy of the A’s and say that their approach doesn’t translate to success in the postseason. Beane has a chance after the 2002 season to join the Boston Red Sox as the highest paid general manager in all of baseball. Although he is intrigued by the opportunity to work for a high payroll team that is also committed to taking an empirical approach to baseball decisions (the team had recently hired Sabermetrics guru Bill James), Beane ultimately decides to remain in Oakland.
I thought this movie did an outstanding job of bringing a somewhat difficult topic to life and making a great picture out of it. The script was crisp, successfully portraying Beane in his professional setting while also showing the human side of him through his interactions with his daughter. As Lewis described in his book, the backdrop of the run-down Oakland stadium, clubhouse, and facilities was accurately portrayed and provided a real sense of the environment in which the team operates. The dialogue between Beane and Red Sox owner John Henry was enlightening, as himself a visionary in the world of business Henry fully appreciated the struggles Beane had to endure to get his philosophy across. Personally, my favorite scenes in the movie included Beane’s interactions with the A’s scouts, his wheeling and dealing at the trade deadline, and when he teaches the reserved Brand how to tell players they have been traded.
As a lifelong baseball fan I loved all the analysis and inside information, as due in large part to the A’s success during this time period every team in baseball now uses Sabermetrics in some form. This includes the high payroll teams such as the Yankees and Red Sox, who have the resources to bring in the game’s best free agents while also utilizing computer analyses methods in order to obtain certain players on the cheap. Red Sox GM Theo Epstein was one of the early followers of Bill James and Billy Beane, and shortly after arriving in Boston he turned the team’s baseball operations department into one of the most innovative in all of MLB. Although this movie doesn’t have the ideal ending of most Hollywood movies, the game of baseball was forever changed by Beane’s A’s and that is accurately reflected. “Moneyball” is right up there with “Field of Dreams” and the incomparable “Major League” as the best baseball movies I have seen. Despite being a baseball movie, the story is compelling enough that even non-sports fan should enjoy it. Follow us on Twitter:@PACsSports
At the heart of the movie is Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane’s (played aptly by Brad Pitt) struggle to field a playoff caliber team despite the monetary disadvantages his small-market team faces. Set after the 2001 season in which his A’s made the playoffs, Beane must replace three of his better players who went on to sign elsewhere as free agents. On the surface this appears to be a difficult task, as Beane must deal with an owner that doesn’t want to increase the team’s payroll and his legion of scouts who evaluate players in an archaic manner. The current method of evaluating players is based on intangibles such as a scout’s instinct, how the players look and act, and the feel that certain prospects have all the makings of a “five-tool player”. We learn through flashbacks that Beane was once praised by scouts as a future star and “five-tool player”. Unfortunately, his baseball career flamed out and he never lived up to the lofty expectations. This provides him with the recognition that scouts instincts are often wrong.
With the help of a young Ivy League grad named Peter Brand (Beane gets him from the Cleveland Indians to be the assistant GM), Beane begins to realizes there is a more tangible way to predict performance. Relying on statistics, equations, and algorithms, Brand projects that the A’s can meet the win total of the previous year’s squad despite losing the aforementioned star players. Brand stresses to Beane that the key for a low payroll team like the A’s is to find players that the rest of baseball undervalues, and obtain them at a reasonable price. The plan is to sign players who have defects, be it age (David Justice) or injury (Scott Hatteberg), and utilize them due to their ability to get on base. Simply stated the more players get on base; the more runs they will score. The more runs they score, the more games the A’s will win.
In one of the more entertaining scenes in the movie Beane lays out the new framework of bringing in flawed players with high on-base percentages to the old guard scouts, who immediately voice their collective disagreement. The force and will of Beane’s personality in this scene is impressive and entertaining, as despite the long standing relationship he has with many of the scouts, he realizes Brand’s computer generated stats are the wave of the future. Getting the A’s scouts and manager Art Howe to think outside the box proves difficult at first, and the team struggles for a majority of the first half of the 2002 season.
Despite the initial struggles of the club, Beane and Brand still believed that over the course of a 162 game season their philosophy would win out. After shipping off a few undesirables, making a key move at the trade deadline, and getting the team to buy into his on-base way of thinking, Beane’s makeshift squad begins to turn things around. I doubt that even he could have predicted the A’s would go on to win a record setting 20 games in a row, which proved to be the apex of the season for the team. After the team is eliminated in the first round of the playoffs for the second consecutive year, the so-called experts question the “Moneyball” philosophy of the A’s and say that their approach doesn’t translate to success in the postseason. Beane has a chance after the 2002 season to join the Boston Red Sox as the highest paid general manager in all of baseball. Although he is intrigued by the opportunity to work for a high payroll team that is also committed to taking an empirical approach to baseball decisions (the team had recently hired Sabermetrics guru Bill James), Beane ultimately decides to remain in Oakland.
I thought this movie did an outstanding job of bringing a somewhat difficult topic to life and making a great picture out of it. The script was crisp, successfully portraying Beane in his professional setting while also showing the human side of him through his interactions with his daughter. As Lewis described in his book, the backdrop of the run-down Oakland stadium, clubhouse, and facilities was accurately portrayed and provided a real sense of the environment in which the team operates. The dialogue between Beane and Red Sox owner John Henry was enlightening, as himself a visionary in the world of business Henry fully appreciated the struggles Beane had to endure to get his philosophy across. Personally, my favorite scenes in the movie included Beane’s interactions with the A’s scouts, his wheeling and dealing at the trade deadline, and when he teaches the reserved Brand how to tell players they have been traded.
As a lifelong baseball fan I loved all the analysis and inside information, as due in large part to the A’s success during this time period every team in baseball now uses Sabermetrics in some form. This includes the high payroll teams such as the Yankees and Red Sox, who have the resources to bring in the game’s best free agents while also utilizing computer analyses methods in order to obtain certain players on the cheap. Red Sox GM Theo Epstein was one of the early followers of Bill James and Billy Beane, and shortly after arriving in Boston he turned the team’s baseball operations department into one of the most innovative in all of MLB. Although this movie doesn’t have the ideal ending of most Hollywood movies, the game of baseball was forever changed by Beane’s A’s and that is accurately reflected. “Moneyball” is right up there with “Field of Dreams” and the incomparable “Major League” as the best baseball movies I have seen. Despite being a baseball movie, the story is compelling enough that even non-sports fan should enjoy it. Follow us on Twitter:@PACsSports
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