Moneyball, the movie

[Jim3k]

Yesterday saw Moneyball at my local megacinema. I a pleased to say it is extremely worth seeing--and I say that trying to keep my A's fan status out of the equation.

Brad Pitt resurrected this film by greenlighting it after Hollywood had decided against it. He obviously saw a vehicle that would elevate himself to Redford status--think Gatsby. Pitt is truly remarkable in the film and somehow the arcane nature of converting traditional baseball art to statistical baseball science becomes a film of worthy drama. It doesn't seem probable, but that's what happens here. Unlike most sports-themed movies, where the underdog comes from behind to win, Pitt's Billy Beane fails. Yet his failure is a win because his thinking changed not only the A's, but all of baseball. Good thing? Bad thing? I dunno--'cept judging from all of the statisticians on this board, I think it must be good.

Anyway, this film will probably get Pitt an AA nomination. If nothing else, the song his daughter (Kerris Dorsey) sings -- "The Show" aka Love is a Riddle is a likely AA nomination for best song. Sung by a twelve-year-old, it has great depth and poetic, folksy power. (OK, I'm a sucker for guitar-led folksongs.) Anyway, it's a real surprise, both because of its seeming incongruity in a baseball story and because of its sweetness (no, it is not contrasted with the unsweetness of the locker room.)

The wheeling and dealing of baseball GMs and the mixture of business with the impact contracts and trading has on families is presented with pungent humor. And, although fictitious, Beane's dominance over Philip Seymour Hoffman's Art Howe is downright funny. Aaron Sorkin has rewritten history to make Howe a bit of a villain. In real life, as in the movie, he was kept in the dark; even so he was much more compliant than the movie allows. Treating Howe that way has resulted in a much better movie, though Howe recently has complained bitterly about his portrayal, even blaming Beane. Oh well.

Likewise, Sorkin has created the character of Peter Brand for Jonah Hill from an amalgamation of Paul DePodesta and Erik Kubota. And Hill's Brand does a nice job of growing up in front of our eyes. He's both a hard believer in the meaning of his stats and a personnel naif who discovers that ballplayer trading has an equally hard side, one he initially shrinks from.

The movie stands on its own, even if reality has been altered under dramatic license. If you want the unaltered version, Michale Lewis' book provides that.

Anyway, I strongly recommend this movie. PG-13 for language.

[weezie]

It was terrific, especially for a real baseball fan. The scene between Beane and Justice in the batting cage was superb. Jim3k, you can thank me for the clubhouse soda anytime.

"It's hard not to be romantic about baseball"

GO TIGERS!!!!

[Olympic Fan]

I've been surprised that we haven't had a thread onm Moneyball before. It's getting critical raves -- an astounding 95 percent on the Tomatometer.

On the other hand, several baseball writers are talking about the way the film distorts history (although to be fair, a lot of that was in Michael Lewis' source book). It is weird that most of the characters -- Beane and almost all the players -- are real historical characters, but the second most important character in the film -- Peter Brand is fictional, although based very closely on Paul DePodesta. Why is everybody else named correctly, while DePodesta is given a fictional name?

Despite the premise of Lewis and the moviemakers, the 2002 A's were not successful because of of a bunch of brilliant moves by Beane. The core of that team -- the pitching trio of Tim Hudson, Barry Zito and Mark Muldar, along with AL MVP SS Miguel Tejada and all-star third baseman Eric Chavez, were all players acquired by Sandy Alderson (Beane's predecessor at GM). There's a lively debate in baseball about while the A's have faded so badly in the last few years under Beane. One argumentment is that everybody in baseball has learned his Moneyball secrets and thus he can no longer take advantage of the rich teams. But another theory is that Alderson actually built the strong A's teams of the turn of the century with his astute drafts and his sharp trades. As Alderson's core group faded, Beane didn't have the skill to maintain that level of success.

That's not what you get from Lewis' or Pitt's Moneyball of course. Instead the focus is on the great pickups Beane made to save the franchise after three key players -- 1B Jason Giambi, OF Johnny Damon and closer Jason Isringhausen -- all opted out after 2001 for free agency. Well, that's a blow, but the loss of three players off a 102 win team shouldn't result in a collapse. Almost any general manager -- even without a lot of money to spend would have found some replacements. In the movie, one of the replacement parts was Jeremy Giambi, but that's a lie -- Giambi Juniior was already on the team. He was Oakland's primary DH in 2001 (most famously he was the guy who didn't slide on the play were Derek Jeter's famous flip relay saved the playoff win for the Yankees).

Beane replaced Isringhausen with another young closer Billy Koch in a quite traditional trade -- giving up a good young player in Erik Hinske (who would win the AL Rookie of the Year Award in Toronto in 2002). He payed $7 million to pick up free agent OF David Justice (quite a sum at the time for a 36-year-old coming off a 98 OPS plus year ... it was only a good deal because it was such short term).

Then there is big debate between Beane and manager Art Howe about who to play at first base. Beane picked up backup catcher Scott Hatteberg from the Red Sox and wanted him to play at first. Howe wanted to play a young first baseman that he thought had a lot of promise. Beane ends the debate by trading his young first baseman for a bag of magic beans (actually he got decent young pitcher Ted Lilly, but then traded HIM for some more magic beans). The point is that in the short term, Beane was probably right -- Hatteberg (116 OPS plus) was a better option in 2002 than 24-year-old Carlos Pena (92 OPS plus with the A's). But over the long term Hatteberg would fade quickly (91 OPS plus in 2003, 82 in 2005), while Pena would blossom into a star (8 of the last nine years over 100 OPS plus, including a 172 a couple of years ago in Tampa. He finished in the top 10 of the AL MVP twice and won a gold glove). It was letting talent like that go for nothing that helped doom Beane's A's to a decade of mediocrity.

The draft doesn't help. In the book, a big deal is make of the 2002 draft, where the A's have five of the top 35 picks. The Michael Lewis story is how Beane and DePodesta (Brand in the movie) stick it to the stupid old scouts. But that's not what happened. The A's did make a couple of decent picks -- Nick Swisher is an excellent player, but he wasn't a Beane/DePosteta reach -- he was the son of a former major leaguer and was drafted about where he was expected to be drafted (one reason they sweat out the Mets picking right before them, they think the Mets might take him). The guy picked right after Swisher? Cole Hamels -- but Beane would not consider him because he's a high school pitcher and the genius doesn't draft high school pitchers. Instead he drafts Joe Blanton, who at least makes the majors (although he's painfully mediocre). That's more than can be said for his other three top picks: pitcher Ben Fritz, infielder John McCurdy or catcher Jeremy Brown. Brown is the key pick because he's the one all the scouts said was not worth a first round pick, while Beane and DePosteda insisted that he was an undiscovered star -- Michael Lewis even titles his chaptyer on the draft "The Jeremy Brown Blue Plate Special". In the chapter Beane and his brain trust laugh at such "stupid" picks as Milwaukee taking Prince Fielder or Tampa taking B.J. Upton.

In my mind, that's the key to the fall of the A's under Beane. It's not that his methods have been copied by richer clubs. It's that he neglected -- and even distained -- traditional scouting amd tried to replace it with numerology. The A's were very good in 2001-2002, not because of Beane's genius, but because Sandy Alderson (who also valued OBP) assembled a talented core of players. Beane could have replaced them by drafting better -- the way the money-strapped Tampa Bay Bucs have done. Instead. just look at the first-round picks Beane and company have wasted since 2002m expending high picks on the likes of Brad Sullivan, Bryan Snyder, Lauren Geminda, Landon Powell ... the list is depresing, Drafting is like batting -- if you hit .300 you are doing well, but Beane is below the Mendoza Line.

Don't get me wrong. I am a big fan of the new sabremetics (except WAR, I have big problems with that measurement). But when it comes to the new stats, Billy Beane is Abner Doubleday ... Bill James is Alexander Cartwright.

Moneyball was a fun book -- Michael Lewis is an excellent writer. And I'm sure the movie is superb -- Pitt is an excellent actor.

But it's all myth.

[Jim3k]

I've been surprised that we haven't had a thread onm Moneyball before. It's getting critical raves -- an astounding 95 percent on the Tomatometer.

****

Moneyball was a fun book -- Michael Lewis is an excellent writer. And I'm sure the movie is superb -- Pitt is an excellent actor.

But it's all myth.

Myth? Hmmn. "Fictionalized in part" is more accurate. And acknowledged by screenwriter Sorkin and others.

Since, as you observe, this thread is about the movie, I suggest you see it before you blast it based on history. The movie stands on its own terms. It is excellent on that basis. See Weezie's concurrence. Keep in mind that the story is about a small market team's struggle to keep up with the giant market team's money.

And, you probably need to brush up on the book's accuracy as well. But I'm not going into the book here in the movie thread.

[Olympic Fan]

Myth? Hmmn. "Fictionalized in part" is more accurate. And acknowledged by screenwriter Sorkin and others.

Since, as you observe, this thread is about the movie, I suggest you see it before you blast it based on history. The movie stands on its own terms. It is excellent on that basis. See Weezie's concurrence. Keep in mind that the story is about a small market team's struggle to keep up with the giant market team's money.

And, you probably need to brush up on the book's accuracy as well. But I'm not going into the book here in the movie thread.

Why not?

Was this about to turn into a deep critical discussion of the film? You liked the movie, great. I acknowledgd that as a movie, it is getting high ratings from film critics. But any time a book or movie uses real names and real historical situations doesn't it have an obligation to stick closely to the facts?

Pride of the Yankees is a much loved sports movie that plays fast and loose with the facts (Gehrig's streak ends when he's pinch-hit for in a game?). Rudy is a great sports movie that unfairly and inaccurately demonizes Dan Devine. Check out The Winning Team some time -- it's a joke of a biopic about Grover Clevelend Alexander (although I've always loved the coincidence that the actor playing a pitcher named for one president then becomes a president himself). Glory Road is a travesty of the real story of Don Haskins and the 1966 UTEP champions.

I have less problem with the ghost of Joe Jackson walking out of an Iowa cornfield in Field of Dreams than I do with the idea that Don Haskins integrated the UTEP basketball team ... or that Billy Beane's genius make the Oakland A's a winner. Nobody is going to mistake Field of Dreams for something that really happened.

If you think I need to brush up on the book's accuracy, please enlighten me. Where was I wrong? About the Jeremy Brown draft? About the role Sandy Alderson played in assembling the 2002 A's? Abou the ultimate value of Scott Hatteberg and Carlos Pena?

I'm glad you loved the movie, but I repeat -- it's myth, with very little connection to what really happened in Oakland that summer.

But the whole issue is bigger than sports movies. There's a great scene in Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock where the head of the Federal Theater Project tries to explain to her assistants why the HUAC is so hot and bothered by the plays that they are producing. She bring up Shakespeare's Richard III and how the historical image of that king -- as a evil, hump-backed murderer -- has been shaped by Shakespeare's brilliant depiction of him ... whereas in truth, historians view him as a great warrior and a fairly effective ruler who was probably not guilty of the murder of the two princes in the tower.

In our own day, I hate to tell you how many people's view of the JFK Assassinatiom has been shaped by Oliver Stone's laughably distorted film.

Compared to those historical distortions, the issue of Billy Beane's role in spreading the use of sabremetics in baseball's hierarchy is just a small issue. But it's still an issue that bothers me.

If you want to dispute my facts or my interpretation of those facts, feel free -- I'd enjoy the debate.

[Jim3k]

Why not?

Compared to those historical distortions, the issue of Billy Beane's role in spreading the use of sabremetics in baseball's hierarchy is just a small issue. But it's still an issue that bothers me.

Then let the distortions bother you, but don't let your personal qualms derail a thread about a movie you haven't seen and whose writer, unlike Oliver Stone, acknowledges his use of the poetic license.

And I understand your POV. I don't go to Stone movies because of those distortions. They are big and are an effort to rewrite important history in a propagandic way. Sorkin's admitted modifications pale by comparison and are, as you say, only small potatoes. After all, we are talking acting skill, character development, humor, whether the song fits the film's premise and Pitt's portrayal of Beane's view of his family life...not the accuracy of some sportswriter's memoir from the locker room, which is where you want to go.

[JasonEvans]

Back to the film...

I should have commented earlier on Moneyball. It is a very good film, though probably not quite an Academy Award contender in my mind. To me, the interesting thing about it is that it is a sports movie that doesn't have very much sport in it. It is mostly talking, not sports action. Now, I think we should hardly be surprised at a lot of talking in a Sorkin-scripted film (the guy loves the sound of his own dialogue), but I still was surprised at how little actual baseball was in the movie.

I though Pitt was very good, though it was sometimes off-putting how quickly his character bounced from joking around to being really pensive and staring out a window into space. I thought this was some of Jonah Hill's best work in screen. I think he struggles when he has to carry a movie and is better suited to a supporting role like this one. By the way, the reason Jonah Hill's Peter Brand is not named Paul DePodesta is that DePodesta did not like the way the character was portrayed in the script. He felt it was not a good reflection of who he actually is and asked that the name be changed. The filmmakers complied.

In some ways, I am glad Moneyball does not follow a typical sports movie arc. Frankly, as a film about a GM, it would be tough for it to do that anyway. My wife, who usually does not like sports movies, enjoyed it. But, it felt a bit slow at times and I sorta wished more would happen. This may have been one of those times where "truth was not stranger than fiction" and the real-life story just didn't have enough "oomph" if you know what I mean.

--Jason "Good movie... very good movie... but not a great one" Evans

[Duvall]

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country...

[UrinalCake]

OlympicFan, you clearly know your stuff and make some very compelling arguments for why the Moneyball way of running a team is, as you say, a "myth." I will say, just to play devil's advocate, that if this is true, then it's a myth that a whole lot of people believe. Moneyball-type statistics are used everywhere in baseball and have reached out to other sports as well. Statistical metrics like VORP show up on Sportscenter without even providing an explanation. You can join fantasy leagues based on obscure variables that no one had ever heard of prior to Moneyball. So a lot of pretty intelligent people seem to believe this "myth."

Also, I did some quick googling and found that the A's made the playoffs in 2002, 2003, and 2006. They finished second in their division in 2004, 2005, and 2010. So there was a pretty good stretch from 2002 through 2006, especially for a small-market team, that can't be entirely explained by the retained players.

[Lord Ash]

The wife and i just saw it as our last date night before the baby... While we both enjoyed it, it was a bit slow. Dialogue was good but not up to the standard, say, of "The Social Network" or anything. Pitt was good, Hill was fantastic and understated. There was a BIG group of ten year olds in the movie, obviously expecting a baseball movie... Not sure if they liked it, although they did behave. One thing; it really made me miss my old jobs in sports a little... First time I've seen a movie about that aspect of sports, and I found myself thinking back on the old days of wearing the team windbreaker and walking down to the field, or watching the hockey game from the zamboni entrance and thinking about contracts and housing deals and how much we could afford to spend on sticks...

[Olympic Fan]

OlympicFan, you clearly know your stuff and make some very compelling arguments for why the Moneyball way of running a team is, as you say, a "myth." I will say, just to play devil's advocate, that if this is true, then it's a myth that a whole lot of people believe. Moneyball-type statistics are used everywhere in baseball and have reached out to other sports as well. Statistical metrics like VORP show up on Sportscenter without even providing an explanation. You can join fantasy leagues based on obscure variables that no one had ever heard of prior to Moneyball. So a lot of pretty intelligent people seem to believe this "myth."

Also, I did some quick googling and found that the A's made the playoffs in 2002, 2003, and 2006. They finished second in their division in 2004, 2005, and 2010. So there was a pretty good stretch from 2002 through 2006, especially for a small-market team, that can't be entirely explained by the retained players.

Obviously, I didn't make myself clear.

The myth is not the new statistics -- which I think I acknowledged that I believed in -- but that Billy Beane used the new stats to transform the Oakland A's and snooker the rest of baseball. I repeat, the truth is that Sandy Alderson built the foundation of the team that Beane won with in the early years of this century (and as an aside, it was Alderson, not Jonah Hill ... er Peter Brand ... er Paul DePosdesta who first started using the new stats to evaluate players in Oakland). It was Beane whose insanely inept drafting philosophy (for instance, no high school pitchers! ... more emphasis on college and high school numbers, less on those old fogey scouts) has led to the decline of that franchise --- and it has been a clear decline ... the team Alderson left Beane won 102-103 games in 2001 and 2002 ... as more and more of the core left, the totals started dropping -- to 96 wins in 2003 ... to 91 in 2004 to 88 in 2005. After a brief revival at 93 wins in 2006, the bottom fell out -- in the last five years, the A's have won 75-75-75-81-74 games.

It's all very well to blame the fact that Oakland is a small market team. But in that era other small market teams have risen to prominence -- the Tampa Bay is the best example. Milwaukee doesn't have much more resources than the A's. They've done it by drafting well. Minnesota has been one of the great success stories of the last decade (albiet with a bad year this year, thanks to a crushing run of injuries).

[UrinalCake]

The wife and i just saw it as our last date night before the baby...

Also known as "the last movie you will ever see" 8-)

[UrinalCake]

The myth is not the new statistics -- which I think I acknowledged that I believed in -- but that Billy Beane used the new stats to transform the Oakland A's and snooker the rest of baseball.

I guess a reasonable explanation might be that it takes a blend of statistical analysis, open-mindedness, and conventional techniques to truly evaluate talent and build a team. Beane's error was that he relied too heavily on just the statistics in an attempt to prove everyone else wrong.

[Mal]

The myth is not the new statistics -- which I think I acknowledged that I believed in -- but that Billy Beane used the new stats to transform the Oakland A's and snooker the rest of baseball. I repeat, the truth is that Sandy Alderson built the foundation of the team that Beane won with in the early years of this century

Just a note - I'm pretty sure Zito and Mulder were drafted in '98 and '99, after Alderson left.

[cspan37421]

Just saw Moneyball today with my son. As far as accuracy goes, I am really in the camp of Olympic Fan. When so much was made of Hatteberg and Bradford, but later clips showed guys like Hudson and Tejada (I don't recall Mulder and Zito getting a mention at all), I recalled to myself, "Yeah, those guys!" I'm not saying sabermetrics are not worthwhile - I believe they are, it's just that the As from that era were assembled with a lot more than just that. And it the use is widespread, so there's not as much of an edge anymore. [an aside: Pitt's Beane orders "no bunting" - but around that time I was on a panel with the CEO of Stats Inc, a fellow actuary, and he pointed out that bunting was actually a lost art, one with a pretty high overall batting average.]

But my main point with this post is that I don't think the movie was all that good as a movie.

- it was shot bleakly; so much industrial-color fluorescent light. One of the grand things about baseball is coming out of the tunnel to see the sunlit green field. We get so little of that with many night games (and the one time when the camera does follow Pitt out of such a tunnel, it's Fenway - oh what a shrine! - but it's raining)
- Pitt spends waaay too much time brooding. That's not great acting; we know he can do that. Ever see A River Runs Through It? Ever wanted to re-watch that? I didn't think so.
- Maybe Jonah Hill not freaking out and dropping F-bombs is great acting because that's what we expect. "No one is McLovin!" But he seemed to be sedated.
- it was unnecessarily slow; no character development esp. with Pitt.
- It wasn't very funny at all (slightly less than 1 chuckle per hour); OK, call it a drama: but see prior point
- we get almost nothing of one of the implicit co-stars of the film, sabermetrics itself. Just about all we get is "he gets on base." Granted, a lot of people have math phobia, but dumbing it down that much leaves nothing significant or insightful. [oh yeah, there was something about different batting averages in different parts of the strike zone; that's nothing new - Ted Williams did that]

call me biased, but I'd rather have the NYT Magazine Article "The No-Stats All-Star" read out loud to me than to see this film again.

[DevilAlumna]

- Pitt spends waaay too much time brooding. That's not great acting; we know he can do that. Ever see A River Runs Through It? Ever wanted to re-watch that? I didn't think so.

Who watches Brad Pitt for his acting ability??! At least he takes his shirt off in A River Runs Through It.

[A-Tex Devil]

It wasn't complete blasphemy vis a vis the book like the Blind Side was. That movie should be ashamed of itself.

I agree that Billy Beane gets way too much credit for all of this. But Michael Lewis was doing a TON of research on this topic, and the A's were simply the right story to fit with his central thesis back in 2002. I imagine other teams were using sabremetrics that year, and I bet Lewis was in contact with them, talking to their executives. But the drama during the A's season that year made it a better story. If the A's don't come out of their early season slump in 2002, does the book even get written? In fact, if he waits two years, he's writing this book about the Red Sox and Billy Beane just gets an prologue about how he foolishly declined the Red Sox GM spot.

[budwom]

Dave Maraniss in today's Washington Post really hammers the movie. He likes the book, but points out, as Olympic Fan has, that the movie distorts the season depicted. The troika of top pitchers
(Zito, Mulder and Hudson) and the league MVP Tejada merit little mention, and all four of those guys were products not of Moneyball analysis, but rather good old fashioned scouting work.

[Olympic Fan]

Dave Maraniss in today's Washington Post really hammers the movie. He likes the book, but points out, as Olympic Fan has, that the movie distorts the season depicted. The troika of top pitchers
(Zito, Mulder and Hudson) and the league MVP Tejada merit little mention, and all four of those guys were products not of Moneyball analysis, but rather good old fashioned scouting work.

If anybody is interested, here is the article that budwom is talking about:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinio...eDM_story.html

Obviously, since he makes the point I was trying to make -- much more eloquently -- I agree. But read it for yourself.

[cspan37421]

Thanks - yes, I had to google the article.

What cheeses me off about Moneyball is that I felt deceived. I was given a twisted version of history - a bunch of half-truths (at most) - and encouraged to draw inferences from it. While I totally buy much of the advances in scouting afforded by sabermetrics, the 2002 As are not the best argument for it - and I suspect, they weren't the only team doing it even then.

I would even go so far as to conjecture that much traditional scouting takes a lot of these stats into play subjectively and implicitly. I have a hard time believing that traditional scouting would look down on a .250 hitter that has an unusually high rate of drawing walks. You don't need OBP to figure that. I also suspect the same true of sluggers who have mediocre batting averages ... their contribution to moving around the bases - and moving those in front of them around - were not unnoticed with traditional scouting. Indeed, such efforts show up in RBI and runs scored, as well as totals for doubles, triples, and HRs. You don't need to figure OPS specifically to notice that, and again, a mediocre batting average but with a disproportionate number of extra-base hits - that gets noticed, and I suspect always has.

Similarly for pitchers - we have long known what Crash Davis knew - that strikeouts are fascist! (j/k) - no, that pitching to contact, getting grounders and fly outs can let a starter go more innings, efficiently, which is good if your starters are better than your middle relievers.

For me it calls into question Lewis' book (to the extent the movie followed the book) and, if the movie was fair to the book, ultimately Lewis himself. Is he just an amazing storyteller who plays loose with the truth when it fits his narrative? I don't know ... I hope not, I've gotten a lot of recommendations for his books (The Big Short, e.g.) and planned to read some of them soon.