Movie Review: Moneyball

Moneyball

Starring Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Philip Seymour Hoffman

Directed by Bennett Miller

Story

Billy Beane changes the way he puts together a team as the GM of the Oakland Athletics with much success. At least until they run into the Twins in the postseason.

Review

This story would make a great documentary on ESPN, but it makes for a slow moving movie. The main character sits in his office most of the time, and the rest of the time he is driving and talking on the phone in his truck. He has a few flashbacks to his playing days that nobody cares about. Really the more interesting character is played by Jonah Hill, but if they focused on him it would kind of kill the movie, since there is no Peter Brand. There's another couple things about the movie really bugged me though. The song that his daughter plays for him was released in 2009 by Lenka. The movie takes place in 2002. Then the final out in the Divisional series, was a popout to Denny Hocking, not Corey Koskie, and Denny Hocking got injured while celebrating. It was a day game, not a night game.

Comparable Movies

I can't think of any comparable movies to compare this to. Who really wants to see a movie about front office guys. Show some baseball in your baseball movie.

Rating

** out of 5

One thing that wasn't mentioned at all in the movie was how good they were at finding and developing starting pitching. That was the real reason Oakland was so good back then.

May the Force be with you,

CHUD

PS - The reason this approach never won a championship for Oakland is because taking walks works against below average pitchers. During the regular season they faced plenty of crappy pitchers and won, but when the postseason came and the pitchers were all good they lost. The good pitchers didn't walk them, and they couldn't get on base as consistently.