More than anything Moneyball is an excellent portrait of Billy Beane (general manager of the Oakland Athletics). So, you can enjoy this film even if you think baseball is like watching paint dry or (somehow) know nothing about the United States’ national pastime. Sure, the film will be enriched by a love of the game; but I want to disabuse anyone of the notion that it is a prerequisite.
Baseball is a curious game, driven by contradictions. It is a game that is both absolutely driven by statistics and yet controlled by superstition.
Teams and fans track and analyze all types of statistical information. A player’s batting average against a left-handed pitcher. Teams may even pull a left-handed pitcher and replace him with a less accurate right-handed pitcher to “play the averages.” Fans joke that teams will go as far as to keep track of a player’s batting average against the Big Unit on a sunny Friday in October when the Unit is on four days rest.
Baseball is also a game where players hold superstitions that are far more onerous than wearing the same pair of socks to each game. A game marred by the curse of the billy-goat and the curse of the Bambino. A game where no one is allowed to talk about a no-hitter in progress and fans and players alike wear rally caps.
Moneyball captures the tension between superstition and statistics perfectly. Players are evaluated based on the attractiveness of the girl they may be dating (as a signal of confidence) and their slugging percentage. But Moneyball suggests focusing on a different set of statistics. The process is about hiring players based on undervalued statisticstical categories (in this case on base percentage).
Moneyball tells the story of Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) and the Oakland A’s, a team on the low end of the payroll divide in Major League Baseball. A divide where, much like in the rest of life, the “haves” do better than the “have-nots”. Beane is disciple of Moneyball. He wants to make up for low payroll by hiring undervalued players.
Pitt’s performance as Billy Beane is a home run. By far his best performance in years. You often forget that Pitt is on-screen: the performance is so mesmerizing.
Pitt’s neurosis is palpable. He constantly paces and chews on just about anything (though mostly sunflower seeds). He is frenetic.
Pitt captures a man driven by his desire: to succeed, to overcome the inequity of baseball’s payroll structure, and to overcome his past failures.
Pitt draws on the contradictions that are at the heart of baseball and Beane. While he attempts to master the statistics that are part of his method, he is also maddeningly controlled by superstition. He is incapable of watching a game for fear that he might jinx the team, instead driving around or working out in the gym (both with maniacal obsession).
Pitt’s performance is also beautifully subtle. The highlight is Pitt’s interactions with Kerris Dorsey who plays Beane’s daughter Casey. There is a tenderness in Pitt’s treatment that is rather remarkable. When he convinces her to sing to him the serenity captured on his face cannot help but to make one smile.
Dorsey herself puts in a rather good performance. With the appropriate quirk and attitude of a teen dealing with such a strong personality.
Philip Seymour Hoffman is his usual great self as reluctant manager Art Howe. Howe was a little irked about his characterization in the film (Beane fought back against Howe’s accusations).
Jonah Hill is surprisingly subdued (in a good way) in his performance as Peter Brand (a character amalgamation of various A’s personnel).
I can only levy two criticisms.
First, the films pacing sometimes gets slow.
Second, the film ends by noting that the 2004 Boston Red Sox vindicated Moneyball by winning the World Series.
I take some umbrage with this. The 2004 Sox spent a heap of money. Four players made over 10 million dollars, with Manny Ramirez raking in $22.5 Million. Sure, the Sox used a statistical system similar to Beane’s to win, but the point of Moneyball is not just the stats but also reaching out for undervalued players to make the most of small payroll. Not even the most ardent or fanatical of Sox supporters would claim that the team was economically efficient.
In the end, Moneyball contains a standout performance from Pitt. The film is dynamic and captures the tensions in baseball rather well.
PARSI VERDICT: Pitt’s performance is a diamond and worth watching.
“Sure, the Sox used a statistical system similar to Beane’s to win, but the point of Moneyball is not just the stats but also reaching out for undervalued players to make the most of small payroll. Not even the most ardent or fanatical of Sox supporters would claim that the team was economically efficient.”
You note that there were four Red Sox players with salaries above $10 million, but you leave out the other side of the equation. How much were they worth? According to fangraphs valuation based on WAR, of the four, only Manny and Nomar were worth less in 2004 than their salries. And as we know, Boston only paid a bit more than half of Nomar’s salary that year, making a hugely controversial, untimately hugely successful, and hugely efficient trade that brought in a much cheaper SS who provided well above his pay in terms of both offensive and defensive value down the stretch.
Here are the key players on that team, with their actually salary first and then their true value calculated by Wins Above Replacement in parentheses. Pitchers first:
Pedro Martinez $17.5m ($17.7m)
Curt Schilling $12m ($22.6m)
Tim Wakefield $4.35m ($5.9m)
Bronson Arroyo $.3m ($12.9)
Derek Lowe $4.5 ($10.6m)
Keith Foulke $3.5m ($6.4m)
So the 5 starters and closer had a combined salary of ~$42 million, and a true value of ~$76 million.
Now the offense:
J. Damon $8m ($14m)
J. Varitek $6.9m ($13.2m)
D. Ortiz $4.587m ($13.3m)
M. Ramirez $22.5m ($11.4)
B. Mueller $2.1m ($3.5m)
M. Bellhorn $.5m ($10.1m)
K. Youkilis $.3m ($4.3m)
K. Millar $3.3 ($4.3)
G. Kapler $.8m ($.1m)
T. Nixon $4.5m ($3.4m)
P. Reese $1.0m ($.7m)
Dave Roberts and Orlando Cabrera each privded significanly more value than they were paid while in Boston in 2004, while Nomar provided less. This probably washes out somewhere along the lines of 2 or 3 million. Excluding them, the key offensive players were paid on the order of $54.5 million while their true value was ~$75.5 million. Many of these players, e.g. Ortiz, Bellhorn, Mueller were rejects or castoffs and were picked up precisely because they had been undervalued by their former teams, and these undervaluations were identified through sabermetric principles.
When your everyday lineup and starting rotation is worth $130 million, and you’re only paying them $96 million, this fanatical fan would call it more than economically efficient.
I knew I would be able to get a response out of you. Yes, you are correct. The payroll versus actual value through a sabermetric analysis means that the Red Sox did pick up players that were undervalued and had a roster that was worth more than they spent. But it is also true that the Sox still had a payroll in the upper quarter of the Majors. Beane was trying to make a team with a small payroll. I think this is the difference that was lost with the Red Sox mention at the end of the film.
I would also say that I think fangraphs is way off the mark when it comes to Manny’s value that year. Defensive metrics are crude, and valuations vary wildly. What we do know is that Manny was a beast in 2004 — the best hitter in the American League, and he crushed righties as well as lefties, and on the road nearly as much as at home. To attribute that many millions of dollars of negative value to his defense doesn’t pass the smell test.
I haven’t seen the movie, I spend what little free time I have writing lengthy comments on blog posts. But I did read the book, and I took it for what it was, a formulaic profile of a “business genius” who identifies and exploits market inefficiencies. Billy Beane has never made any secret about wishing he had more money to work with. It’s just that like most investors in the Michael Lewis genre, his results are partly a function of initial capital and leverage. To me, “Moneyball,” such that it exists, means only the development and use of previously unused methods to identify and exploit inefficiencies in player scouting, valuation and acquisition. By that definition, the 2004 Red Sox were very much a Moneyball team. Theo just had more capital to leverage.
Nice to hear from you. I hope you’re well.