I should start by stating I\u2019m not an avid baseball fan.\u00a0 I watch the playoffs, but not religiously.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like fantasy baseball, all the freaking stats baseball people keep, and I don\u2019t give a shit if anyone is on steroids.\u00a0 So, baseball people freak out a little when they talk to me.\u00a0 To them I\u2019m a Martian.<\/p>\n
All that said, I love a good baseball movie.\u00a0 Major League<\/em> is still one of my favorite movies; and if you haven\u2019t seen Long Gone<\/em> you need to quit reading this and go to your friendly neighborhood illegal download and watch the awesome.\u00a0 For all the bullshit, baseball can still be magic.\u00a0 Hence, why I watch the playoffs.<\/p>\n I do enjoy the premise of the film.\u00a0 Billy Beane (Brad Pitt), GM of the Oakland A\u2019s, comes to a realization several days into a rebuilding project (he\u2019s just lost Damon, Isringhausen, and Giambi to free agency).\u00a0 He realizes it\u2019s stupid to play the game the same way as the Yankees who have 4-5 times his resources.\u00a0 He doesn\u2019t have the luxury of doing things the same way.\u00a0 He has to be cheap in every sense of the word.<\/p>\n He retains a highly overqualified statistician from the Indians (Jonah Hill) and begins to approach players in a different light.\u00a0 They determine a minimum run total the team must achieve to win a minimum number of games Jonah projects will get the team into the playoffs.\u00a0 So they have to score x amount of runs and allow no more than y amount of runs.\u00a0 And they determine that the most important statistics that result in runs scored are on-base percentage and to a lesser extent, slugging percentage.\u00a0 So when they\u2018re looking to replace Giambi; they don\u2019t look for a similar talent.\u00a0 They look to replace his contribution to the team\u2019s on-base percentage.\u00a0 So they don\u2019t look to buy players, they look to buy runs.<\/p>\n Similarly, they ignore several hallowed baseball standby\u2019s.\u00a0 For instance, they completely ignore the dominant hand of the player.\u00a0 Statistically it didn\u2019t seem to matter whether the pitcher was a righty or lefty; so they just looked at the on-base and slugging percentages against him.<\/p>\n These new innovations lead to a different value scheme for players and the A\u2019s were able to field a\u00a0 very competitive team playoff team even with their low budget and the loss of 3 marquee players.<\/p>\n The interesting thing is that the antagonist in the film isn\u2019t the Yankees, its not an opposing coach or team or scout.\u00a0 The antagonist is baseball itself.\u00a0 Baseball culture is highly resistant to change.\u00a0 The scouts on Beane\u2019s team all rebelled against his new system and the head scout even quit.\u00a0 The new format completely ignored their opinions and focused on obscure (at the time) quantitative data.\u00a0 Beane isn\u2019t too sorry to switch focus from the opinions of scouts since he views himself as a prime example scouts don\u2019t know shit.\u00a0 (Billy was a major league prospect and ignored a scholarship to Stanford to play for the Mets because they told him he was a can\u2019t-miss talent.\u00a0 He never really amounted to anything in pro baseball [as a player])\u00a0 Jonah Hill at one point theorizes that unless they actually win the world series; baseball would try to bury what they accomplished because it didn\u2019t fit in with established baseball culture.\u00a0 He was half right.\u00a0 According to the film, the Red Sox were paying very close attention and would later adopt Beane\u2019s system as their own.\u00a0 And something about a fat dude’s curse ending.\u00a0 I don’t know, apparently it’s in a Steven King book.<\/p>\n All in all this was a decent film.\u00a0 I like the story of kicking the dust off baseball culture and trying to update it.\u00a0 History isn\u2019t usually kind to the originators of new ideas (until they\u2019re safely dead) but Mr. Beane and company deserve some credit for trying something new in a game where nobody ever ever does.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I should start by stating I\u2019m not an avid baseball fan.\u00a0 I watch the playoffs, but not religiously.\u00a0 I don\u2019t like fantasy baseball, all the freaking stats baseball people keep, and I don\u2019t give a shit if anyone is on … Continue reading