“Moneyball” with Brad Pitt - Amazon Prime

Entertaining movie for Hollywood, but not so much for baseball. I kept asking myself the entire movie if they were going to ignore the elite pitching staff when portraying this team as a bunch of misfits….yeah. They did.

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Entertaining movie for Hollywood

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Bingo. That A’s team had plenty of talent (especially in the bullpen); it wasn’t all “woe is me”.

The movie also kind of guts itself by telling a “golly gee whiz look how they outsmarted everyone with limited resources” story, then glossing over the fact that Billy Beane never won much of anything, and the A’s have been considered the worst franchise in baseball for a very long time.

“What will the fans think?”

“Let’s put one of them on first base.”

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The movie also kind of guts itself by telling a “golly gee whiz look how they outsmarted everyone with limited resources” story, then glossing over the fact that Billy Beane never won much of anything, and the A’s have been considered the worst franchise in baseball for a very long time.

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well everyone else caught up.

You know what works better than money ball? lots of money ball.

Once I found out that Art Howe wasn't really as fat as Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Art Howe was upset that they had him portrayed by a fat Philip Seymour Hoffman...

Well now I enjoy re-watching the movie even more.

So you were enough of a fan to watch a baseball documentary but not enough to watch probably the most popular baseball movie of the past twenty years?

How have you "never heard" of this movie? It plays on a network almost weekly if not daily.

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So you were enough of a fan to watch a baseball documentary but not enough to watch probably the most popular baseball movie of the past twenty years?

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I don't usually make baseball film suggestions to hardcore baseball fans, but if any "baseball fan" in this thread hasn't seen "The Battered Bastards of Baseball" on Netflix, watch it.

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The movie also kind of guts itself by telling a “golly gee whiz look how they outsmarted everyone with limited resources” story, then glossing over the fact that Billy Beane never won much of anything, and the A’s have been considered the worst franchise in baseball for a very long time.

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They were on the cutting edge of sabermetrics in MLB. Boston took their approach and put real money into it which turned into multiple WS wins.


Being innovative only gets you so far if people eventually catch up.


That being said, the As making the playoffs multiple times, even with no league pennants, is still an accomplishment on their budget.



What the movie doesn’t show is how Moneyball affected the A’s draft and they made some really poor choices by drafting players who weren’t as good as they could draft because they avoided guys they thought would cost too much on either a second contract or from their rookie pool in that draft.

If you look at that draft, they got one good guy at the top in Nick Swisher (1B - Ohio State) but drafted some questionable players with their compensation picks in the first like Jeremy Brown (C - Alabama).

Considering that getting players in the draft means controlled contracts for a few years, nickel and dime shite costs you in the long run.

Maybe my favorite baseball movie