MONEYBALL, as reviewed by a guy who knows the real people involved.

MONEYBALL, as reviewed by a guy who knows many of the real people involved.

As you guys know, I know my baseball, and I would have made precisely the same points he made, although I never have any personal contact with baseball management.

I would add that Billy Beane did have one great stroke of absolute genius, and the movie captures that more or less accurately. BB was just about the only guy who believed that Scott Hatteberg still had a good future in baseball as a full-time player after his catching days were over, and the As got a tremendous amount of mileage out of that guy for a modest amount of money. Hatty put up an excellent .374 OBP that year, and exhibited some unsuspected power as well. And he really did pinch hit the homer that won the 20th consecutive game.

And David Justice contributed very little for the seven million bucks he was paid (he retired after that season). It isn't difficult to find an outfielder who can put up a .785 OBP with 11 HR and 49 RBI, and just about anyone else (1) would have been better defensively, and (2) would have been able to stay in the line-up better. So Justice was no bargain, which kind of contradicts the film's argument that Billy Beane was a smart shopper. In fact, you could probably make the argument that Justice was the most overpaid player in baseball that year

Setting all that aside, it's good to remember that the As won because they had the Cy Young winner and the MVP, as well as Tim Hudson, Eric Chavez, and Mark Mulder! Those guys are barely mentioned in the film, if at all. (Granted they exist outside of the film's central argument, and thus belong on the periphery, but those were five of the league's best players. When you have five of the best guys in the game, will people really be so surprised by your success as everyone seems to be in this film?)