A Philly Reflection on Moneyball

I just saw Moneyball last night and I thought it was a great baseball movie. The premise which I'm sure many of you know is that small market teams like the Oakland Athletics have much smaller budgets than teams such as the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. As a result, these teams cannot afford to spend money on top of the line free agents and it makes it harder for them to compete and reach the playoffs. The A's 39 million dollar payroll was nothing compared to the Yankees payroll of 119 million. When discussing his view of the Athletics, A's GM Billy Beane's character portrayed by Brad Pitt is quoted saying, "There are rich teams and there are poor teams, then there's fifty feet of crap and then there's us."

So with this reality the Athletics find themselves without the payroll to re-sign three of Oakland's major players who helped them to win 102 games and make the playoffs in 2001. Although they won 102 games, the Athletics lost in the ALDS in five games against the Yankees. For a Phillies fan seeing this movie this resemblance was strikingly all too familiar. Because of not having the money, Beane saw 1B Jason Giambi sign with the New York Yankees in one of their ordinary multi-million dollar deals and OF Johnny Damon go to the Red Sox for 7.7 million after Beane had believed they had a deal to keep him for 7.5 million. Reliever Jason Isringhausen also signs with the St. Louis Cardinals after the season.

With his top three guys gone, Beane is forced to find ways to replace the productivity the A's are losing. After some searching and finding Peter Brand, a character loosely based on Paul DePodesta and some of Beane's other advisors he looks to sabermetrics, the Bill James ostracized idea that evaluating players is more than just traditional scouting and that it can and should be done more by looking at the numbers. Beane and Brand determined that the most important number to look at was OBP and that by looking solely at this number, they could get players cheaply that other teams overlooked or undervalued. Included in this crop were reliever Chad Bradford who was passed up on because of his submarine style of throwing, Catcher turned First baseman Scott Hatteberg who after suffering an elbow injury making it impossible for him to throw from behind the plate was dismissed by the Red Sox, David Justice who was a former Yankee who according to Beane the team wanted so badly to get rid of him that they paid the A's half of his seven million dollar salary to take him and Jeremy Giambi, brother of A's former star Jason and someone with several off the field issues.

In my opinion the movie was very good and I would recommend it. It really does tell the story of the underdog and overcoming obstacles. The 2002 A's team may not have won the World Series but they did prove that sabermetrics can work. It wasn't smooth sailing all the way but they recorded a record breaking 20 consecutive wins en route to the division title and another playoff appearance. After the season, the Boston Red Sox hired Bill James, inventor of the sabermetric approached and tried to lure Beane from Oakland. Other teams also mirrored Beane's approach including hiring sabermetric analysts. Simply put, the moneyball style of evaluating players changed the game of baseball.

From Philly to Oakland, the Athletic Connection 

Now seeing that this is a Philly sports blog I feel obligated to point out the Philadelphia connections in this movie. One obvious connection is the Athletics themselves. Formally from Philadelphia, the Athletics moved to Oakland following some pretty good success in Philly. While in Philly, they set the AL record of 20 consecutive wins which the Oakland A's tied in 2002.                                                                          

Phone Call to Ed Wade

Also connected to Philly is a phone call that Beane makes to then Phils GM, Ed Wade. Beane offers him a trade in which the Phillies acquired Jeremy Giambi. It is funny because in the phone call, I don't remember the exact quote, but Wade says something along the lines of, "are you taking advantage of me?" It made me laugh because of how the Phillies have seemingly taken advantage of Wade now with the Astros. Guess he never knew a good trade from a bad one and guess he still doesn't.

Raul Ibanez is Black?        
Finally and possibly most humorously, there is a scene when the Athletics are playing the Kansas City Royals to go for their 20th win. In this game the Athletics led by 11-0 but the Royals came charging back. In one scene former Phillies Mike Sweeney and Raul Ibanez are both portrayed as getting hits which help the Royals tie the game. Sweeney's portrayal was pretty spot on but when Ibanez came to the plate, I couldn't help but burst out laughing. The Cuban American superstar was portrayed, plainly put, as a black guy. He looked more like Jimmy Rollins than Raul Ibanez.