Directed by: Bennett Miller
Starring: Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright, Kerris Dorsey, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Ken Medlock, Chris Pratt
Moneyball doesn't end with a walk-off homer or a game-ending strikeout. It is about baseball, yes, but about the business side of the game. Baseball is big business and each of the league's thirty-two teams uses any means necessary to gain a competitive advantage. Back in 2001, the Oakland A's, managed by Art Howe and run by general manager Billy Beane, lost in the American League playoffs to the New York Yankees. The Yankees outspent the A's by nearly three to one, and following the gut-wrenching series loss, the A's will lose their best players to free agency thanks to an A's owner with short arms and deep pockets.
Billy (Pitt) is charged with an unenviable task of replacing his star players on a limited payroll. He equates the A's to being organ donors for the big spenders like the Yankees and Red Sox. "There are rich teams, there are poor teams, there is fifty feet of crap, and then there's us," he tells his scouts during an off-season meeting. The scouts use intuition and the eye test to determine who the best
players are. Billy, with the help of awkward analytics guru Peter Brand (Hill), implements a new
player evaluation strategy: Find the players who are undervalued due to a variety of biases (too old, strange swing, odd pitching mechanics, etc.) but possess certain statistics which will lead to a favorable win-loss percentage. "Like an island of misfit toys," says Peter, and his analogy is spot on.
The scouts don't buy into the new method of metrics. Howe (Hoffman) resents being told how
to manage the club based on spreadsheets. Billy builds a no-name team (except for washed-up
veteran David Justice) for the 2002 season, and at first the experiment blows up in his face as the losses mount and the fan base calls for his head. But, then the team gels and begins to win. At one point, the A's set an American League record with twenty consecutive wins. But, Billy aches to win the World Series, and even after a successful season beyond his wildest dreams, he wonders aloud if that is enough.
Billy is a former major league player who failed to live up to his potential. He became a scout after retirement and worked his way to the general manager's job for Oakland. He is driven not as much by winning as by not losing. He hates losing more than he likes winning. There is a difference. Brad Pitt (in an Oscar-nominated performance) plays Billy with a chip on his shoulder the size of Texas. He is tired of being considered small-time, and implements his new system with the relentlessness of a pit bull. But Billy has a soft spot for his daughter (Dorsey), and while he is still smarting from a recent divorce (which he perceives as another failure in his life), he cares a great deal for her. You can't help but be impressed by a Pitt performance which uses swagger and arrogance to cover up his demons. Those demons are past failures and he wants to erase them by winning the last baseball game of the year.
Jonah Hill graduated from stoner comedies to a multi-layered (and Oscar-nominated) role here. Peter is socially inept, but when he starts talking about baseball and on-base percentages, he becomes a smoother talker than even Billy. He is the nerd who never played baseball but always loved the game from afar. Now, he has his chance to work in baseball with the first person ever to take his analytics seriously. As part of his job, Peter sometimes has to tell players they are cut or traded. H
His reaction is one of a man who would be happier sitting in his office in the bowels of the decrepit Oakland Coliseum than dealing with such a negative part of the business.
Buoyed by smart, knowing dialogue and an instinctive love of the game, Moneyball proves a baseball movie doesn't have to be just about the on-field play (although there is some in the movie).
Moneyball sees the game from a rarely seen perspective, and it is quite refreshing to see. We've seen enough of the players. Moneyball lets the behind-the-scenes guys get their moment in the sun.
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