THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Funny… the Yahoo commercial has Nick Swisher!

Why do I get the feeling the A’s are going to win the World Series in this movie?

The A’s can’t win the Series. Remember, Billy Beane’s sh!t doesn’t work in the playoffs!

Based on this trailer, it looks like your conventional sports movie with the underdog coming out on top in the end. IOW, unless it’s done exceptionally well, with strong character development and expert directing and some unexpected developments, it’s gonna be “been there, done that”. Ho-hum.

I also got the sense that they may be greatly exaggerating the saber vs scouts thing, in order to generate conflict. Ho-Hum.

I believe Pitt was high on that recent list of Rotten Tomato ratings, but that doesn’t mean he’s perfect. This trailer leaves me with low expectations…

Tough crowd!  I’m looking forward to it, and if it’s half as good as Blind Side, I’ll be happy.

I haven’t read the book yet, and haven’t followed the production of the movie, but I thought the trailer was good and makes me want to go see it.

Quite possibly the stats vs scouts was a bigger thing ten years ago, the first time around. A few years later the Rays did win the Series with this type of front office analysis (see The Extra 2%)

Wow, that looks really good.  I’m excited!

Brian/6

A few years later the Rays did win the Series with this type of front office analysis (see The Extra 2%)

You Pirates fans like to re-write history against your fellow PA baseball fans?

Is that because you’re jeoulous of the Eagles 6 Super Bowl wins to the Steelers none?

On topic, trailer looks pretty good.  Not get a babysitter and go to the theater good, but sit on my couch and press some buttons of OnDemand at 4.99 good.

and the Phillies got good without being a saber team. Maybe I’m suffering from Will Leitch syndrome. I haven’t followed the post season since Sid Bream scored.

How many SB wins do the Eagles have? Did I miss something?

You only missed my attempt to keep the joke going.  You re-write the Phillies from having won the WS so I rewrote the football part with the Eagles with 6 titles to the Steelers 0 when it’s actually the reverse.

Or do the Steelers have 7 now?  Either way, the Eagles are definitely sitting at 0.

Oh, I’m sorry, I see my mistake.

As I said, I don’t really follow the post season. Maybe the Pirates will make the playoffs before I die, and I will care again.

I do remember that Jinaz came over to my house to watch a game between the Phils and Rays. It just escaped me who won the Series.

It’s not for us though; they’ve counted our money before they ever started writing or filming.  The challenge is, can they get my wife to buy a ticket too?  And indeed, after watching the trailer, she’s in.  I liked it too.

I thought Blind Side was a poor interpretation of the book.  I wish there was more from the book about Oher’s past.  Some parts of it were downright laughable ("You scored in the 98th percentile for ‘protective instincts’” was my favorite.  I would LOVE to see what job placement test rates people on “protective instincts").  And I really really disliked the facial expression of the actor playing Oher throughout the movie.  I rarely notice directing in movies, I’m much more of a story guy, but that was distracting.

Who cares if the Blind Side movie corresponded to the Blind Side book?

The movie was great.  That’s more than enough for me.

See The Social Network.  Sorkin does drama.  If the drama isn’t quite high enough to create tension, he’s going to create it.

I’m guessing this will be one of those that really divides the community.  If the goal is to see the book reproduced to the letter or to see sabermetrics handled in a thoughtful, nuanced way, you’ll be disappointed.  If you want to see the conversation expanded to a broader audience that may not have been aware, you’ll be happy.

My goal is to see a good movie.  Who cares about accurately portraying sabermetrics.

Cops and FBI agents aren’t always accurately portrayed.

Who cares about seeing a good movie?  My goal is to see sabermetrics accurately portrayed.

I can probably make an extremely boring movie that will portray sabermetric accurately.  I’d get it narrated by Ben Stein.

I’m not so concerned that sabermetrics is portrayed accurately, as long as it’s not portrayed in caricature. If some of the concepts and ideas are simplified for the sake of story, that’s fine with me—I just don’t more ammo for the Murray Chass/Joe Morgan crowd.

More thoughts on it posted here:

http://blog.lemuriabooks.com/2011/06/moneyball-revisited/

That clip I saw was fantastic… “You don’t buy players… you buy wins… and to buy wins, you buy runs.”

That’s beautiful right there.  They can mess up everything else, but they got that right.

I don’t know, I really hope they explain that Beane focuses on market pricing due to the small-market thing.  I can see this easily being misconstrued (again) as “Billy Beane doesn’t value the same things that other people value”.  If the movie doesn’t reflect that then that’ll really bother me.

I really don’t care what they explain or not.

This is a movie!  It has to be fun to watch…

Isn’t that what’s fun about Moneyball?  The fact that big money teams didn’t value important things about winning baseball games that Billy Beane did and thus he was able to afford them?

Just showed the trailer to my wife.

“You’d be the fat guy - not Brad Pitt!

It’s good - I’d go to see it”

Brian, very funny response by the wife. 

Shame that the Paul DePodestaish guy was turned into a caricature (short fat dude), but I agree with Tango and others that think it looks pretty fun.  I liked Social Network, so if it turns out anything like that it should be fun to watch.  The basic ideas of buying runs, looking for inefficiencies, etc, is pretty much right on.  I’m sure they’ll push the no-fielding schtick, so we’ll need to fight off a horde of people arguing that on message boards after they see the movie...but I think this should be a good thing.

Regarding stats vs. scouts, that’s how I remember the book reading as well--exaggerating the divide.  It’d be fun to go back and read the book now that we know how some of the players who were poo-pooed turned out. 
-j

I can’t stand the casting of Jonah Hill for DePodesta. They felt they had to cast a schlubby nerd for the analytic guy, when DePodesta is really a trim former athlete and a fine looking man?

Trailer #2 added up top.

I’m guessing this will be one of those that really divides the community.

Just imagine the sequel --- Kenny Williams. The anti-sabermatician that robbed teams to bring Chicago its 1st World Series in 80+ years.

A Michael Moore/Oliver Stone production.

That movie is countered with the Theo Epstein Story ... Rounders meets MLB. Ben Afleck is dying for the role.

Oh, lets the big screen battle begin.

"ugly girlfriend means no confidence?” Is that really how scouts are going to be represented? Well, aside from looking 88 years old.

Anyway, looks pretty good. Will I see it? Man, I love baseball so much I say through For Love of the Game. Moneyball’s going to seem like a mid-80s Stallone/Swarzenegger flick compared to that Costner Classic. Of course, I’m seeing it.

It’ll be a good flick, unless you’re one of those people in the audience critiquing every line for accuracy.

“Dad, are you gay?”

“Did you get on the internet again?”

“Not that there’s anything wrong with that”

“No! I am not gay!”

“It said you were the first major league player to come out. My friends thought it was pretty cool”

“ that was the other Billy Bean!”

“Riiight, there were TWO Bill Beanes in the major leagues.”

“Yes, there were, I was on the Mets and he was on the Tigers – look it up on Baseball Reference, B-E-A-N”

“Dad, that’s not how we spell our name”

“But it’s how he spells his name”

@CircleChange

I don’t have the book with me, but I’m almost positive the girlfriend line was in there.

NWS---

I may need to re-read Moneyball, because I guess I don’t remember a lot of what was in there.

That’s amazing a scout would say that, not so much I guess that he thought or said it, but that he felt comfortable/supported enough to say it at a serious scouting meeting.