Preview

Couple of pictures of a stadium soon to be reviewed

Too Much Moneyball

In fairness to the Yankee-haters out there and combining my recent posts about the movie Moneyball, here's a funny video entitled Too Much Moneyball by the guys at College Humor. Enjoy.

Dan's Moneyball Review

I saw Moneyball opening weekend with Mandi and overall was very impressed. First of all, it's been a long time since a notable baseball movie has come out. For the casual baseball fan who was completely unaware of the sabermetric revolution, I'd say this movie is a fantastic catch. It certainly explains how the Oakland A's, led by their General Manager Billy Beane did what many thought was impossible - compete with the big market teams like the New York Yankees for several years and started the wide-spead acceptance of modern baseball statistics. Moneyball correctly shows them valuing statistics that help teams win and not just individual player hit-production that were otherwise undervalued in the player-evaluation market in addition to showing many of the fallacies in scouting players. Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill played their parts perfectly if not entirely accurately. The biggest character error, at least from my reading and understanding of it all was the depiction of the on-field manager of the A's - Art Howe. While I do remember him getting a significant amount of credit during the A's run with the movie critiquing him for it, I don't believe it was all undeserved. I'd also add that Art Howe is apparently quite angry over Phillip Seymour Hoffman's portrayal of him. With that said, I don't necessarily believe that the movie changing Art Howe so much made it less enjoyable - it was clearly to aid the rest of the storyline depicting the resistance that Beane faced when trying to get people on board with a stat-based team and not a scout-based team. However, where I do find much fault in the movie is that Moneyball never made any mention of the contributions of their ace pitching staff of Tim Hudson, Barry Zito and Mark Mulder nor the likely scouting (or statistic development for pitching) that got them to the A's. It also never makes any mention of the rise of Miguel Tejada, instead showing a couple screenshots of his jersey flash across the screen in random plays. The biggest strength on the player side of the movie is certainly showing the transformation of Scott Hatteberg from baseball washout to a valued statistical baseball player.

Without question, the movie's star Brad Pitt needs to be given credit for his excellent portrayal of Beane. He perfectly acted his moments and expressions of belief, frustration, flashbacks, endearment and disgust. Jonah Hill, while probably not a great depiction of Paul DePodesta (read more about him here), who is portrayed as "Peter Brand" in the movie since he wouldn't allow his name to be used, did provide a great character in Peter Brand who really was the driving genius behind the use of "Moneyball" statistics. I would also have to give credit to Chris Pratt who played a convincing Scott Hatteberg.

Now, not for nothing, buuutttt

Early season prediction of how 2011 Red Sox would rival 1927 Yankees as greatest team in history... Hmm.

Sorry, I had to, I'm a Yankees fan and Mandi is an O's fan... 

Moneyball

A new movie is coming out this weekend called Moneyball starring Brad Pitt who portrays Billy Bean, the manger of the Oakland A's who was really the groundbreaking GM in terms of using modern advanced statistics in evaluating players as opposed to relying on the human eye of scouts. While the A's haven't won a championship, they certainly became a wonder-team for several years during Beane's tenure. Mandi and I will be watching this weekend, hopefully!

The Stadium Shmadium Tour 2: Make It Stop (Pittsburgh Pirates)

The second installment of the Stadium Shmadium Tour, PNC Park, home of the Pittsburgh Pirates. Another hilarious entry for these guys. I'd say the best part is Dave's "winning streak" of questioning the knowledge of the Pirates' fans. Hilarious.

Ninemoreouts Stadium Shmadium Tour

As the baseball season winds down and my job is becoming increasingly more demanding, Mandi and I will likely be unable to review any more stadiums and games this season. With that said, I'm going to introduce you all to some of my favorite videos on Youtube and will link some of their videos on our page. The premise is that three best friends get together for a trip each year to a baseball game and become that home team's biggest fans for a day. They have some pretty humorous stuff - here's their first one, for the Blue Jays. Probably my favorite lines are regarding the pitch speeds in centimeters/hour to poke some fun at the metric system. You can watch below, or click here!

Enjoy! Thanks to Scott, Dave and Mike for letting us post their videos on our website!

Standby in the future for more of Ninemoreouts' videos as well as a second post regarding the Corpus Christi Hooks!