Logo of the Oakland Athletics. Photo credit: Pixy.

By Bryson Raquet

Moneyball, starring Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill, is a 2011 film based on the book Moneyball: The Art of Winning an Unfair Game, by Michael Lewis. Lewis is a famous sports and finance author who also wrote The Blind Side: Evolution of a Game. Moneyball is about the 2002 season of Major League Baseball’s Oakland Athletics and how, against all odds, they went on to have the 5th-longest win streak in baseball history.

The movie opens with the 2001 American League Division Series final. Athletics General Manager (GM) Billy Bean, played by Pitt, is seen sitting in RingCentral Coliseum, home of the Athletics. However, no game is being played. Bean is listening to a broadcast of the game that is being played across the country in New York. Even though he is the GM, he does not attend any of the games.

After the A’s lose the game, Bean knows that the future does not look bright for his team. The Athletics lost three key players in their starting lineup and had to build a new team in 2002. Typically, there is a steady flow of cash coming into Major League Baseball teams, and it’s not particularly challenging to rebuild the team. However, the 2002 Oakland Athletics are the lowest-salaried team of all time and had very little spending money to rebuild their team into a playoff competitor.

The day after the game, Bean meets with Athletics co-owner Stephen Schott, played by tech CEO Bobby Kotick, to discuss the upcoming 2002 season. Bean explains that the team “can’t compete with $120 million payrolls with $38 million.” Scott then explains to Bean that he needs to work with what he has and to do the best he can to form a team with the money he has. Bean is conflicted with having to build a team off of limited money. This is where Peter Brand, played by Hill, enters the movie.

Jonah Hill at the BAFTA film awards in 2012. Photo credit: Paul Bird via Wikimedia Commons.

Brand is a young employee at the Cleveland Indians organization, and when Bean goes to try to work out a trade between the two teams, Brand interferes and tells the Indians’ General Manager Mark Shapiro, played by Reed Diamond, not to make the trade. After the meeting ends, Bean goes to Brand’s desk and asks why he likes the player that Bean wanted to trade for. Brand gives his explanation, and Bean immediately notices Brand’s impressive baseball knowledge, or baseball IQ, and wants him to be a part of the staff for the Athletics, because he knows he could aid the rebuilding process.

Bean works out a deal later that night and buys Brand from the Cleveland Indians. Bean is interested in Brand because of the way he evaluates each baseball player. Brand uses sabermetrics to evaluate each player’s strengths and weaknesses and to find value in players that most teams wouldn’t. Sabermetrics is formally defined as the use of statistical analysis to analyze baseball records and make determinations about player performance. Sabermetrics has been around for a long time, but nobody called it that until baseball writer and statistician Bill James wrote about it in 1980 in his book The Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract and coined the term. 

RingCentral Coliseum, home of the Athletics. Photo credit: flickr user redlegsfan21 via Wikimedia Commons. 

Bean introduces Brand to his team of scouts, who are all skeptical of him in their first meeting because they have no clue who he is and why he is there. The scouts are all experienced and are not used to this method of scouting players, so they do not trust it. Bean wants to pick up three players. One of them has issues off the field with drugs and alcohol, the second is old and past his peak performance, and the last one is a catcher that Bean wants to play at first base because he had Tommy John surgery and can no longer throw well. The scouts are frustrated that Bean trusts Brand’s plan over theirs, since all of them have so much experience and success, but it’s only Brand’s first year in the baseball business. 

The scouts are doubtful about the plan and don’t listen to Bean at the beginning of the season. Athletics’ head coach Art Howe, played by Academy Award-winner Phillip Seymor Hoffman, refuses to start two players that Bean put in the lineup in the first few games of the season. Bean tells him to use his lineup, but Lowe does not listen. Bean has no other choice but to trade the players or cut them from the team. The scouts and Howe don’t start believing in Bean, Brand, or their plan until the team starts to win games.

Bean never had a bond with his previous teams, but he always had superstar players. The 2002 season was different, and he didn’t realize the importance of having a bond with his players until then. Once Bean starts interacting with his players, getting to know them more, and letting them know that he cares, they start playing much better. The Athletics started to gain momentum in June of 2002; they won 20 games in a row and fell six games short of breaking the win streak record set by the New York Giants in 1916.

Although the Athletics fell short of a championship ring in 2002 when they were eliminated from the American League Championship, the fact that Bean built up a team against all odds and went on a 20-game win streak is beyond impressive.

After the 2002 season, Bean was offered a five-year, $12.5 million deal to be the GM of the Boston Red Sox. He turned down the deal because of his love for Oakland. In exchange for his loyalty, co-owner Lea Wolff offered Bean a 2.5% stake in the franchise, which had a value of $8 million.

Sabermetrics completely changed the way baseball players are evaluated, especially for pitchers. In the past five seasons, the rate of strikeouts per team has gone up and the rate of walks has gone down. This is due to the way teams are using sabermetrics to evaluate each detail of every pitcher’s performance.

The performances in the film help explain the film to non-baseball people by starting the film at the beginning of the season and telling the viewers each detail along the way. I recommend this film to all people, but mostly to baseball players and fans, because baseball terminology used in the film might be confusing to the general public.

Mac Friddell, a former baseball player, fan, and coach, and an Upper School math and statistics teacher, said that he “loved the book [Moneyball], and while the movie did what you would expect Hollywood to do it, the result was entertaining and still did a good job of illustrating the idea that data beats the eye test.”