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.