Elements Bits: Moneyball

 

 

Cast:

 

Brad Pitt – Billy Beane

Jonah Hill – Peter Brand

Philip Seymour Hoffman – Art Howe

 

In the world of sports, the club with the most cash to spend gets to have all the good players. For some it may be about entertainment, but for Billy Beane, it’s all about winning.

 

Competing against the likes of the New York Yankees that have a salary cap of 140 million, all Billy has to work on is a player salary budget that is roughly 38 mil. So how do you come up with a team that can win championships without the right players? It’s all about the math. And when Billy hires Peter Brand, an economics graduate from Yale, they used this science to recruit the players they need to win.

 

But then their theory does not live up to its expectations, and the team is spiraling down to last place. So how will Billy turn things around?

 

(Film is based on a true story)

 

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Elements Bits number 1:

 

Best talents money can buy versus seasoned or experienced competitors. One good example is the ever famous NBA team, the Miami Heat. Two years ago they got two of the best players in the league to join their premier player to have the most formidable Big Three that year. Everyone thought that they would railroad themselves to the championship, which of course they did, but they did not expect to lose against a team that had oldies and veterans in their lineup.

 

The Miami Heat were defeated by the Dallas Mavericks. Experience seemed to trump the easy way out by getting the best players with all those cash. You see, it’s not all about the hype and the individual talents. It is years of hard work,leveraging on the role players and experience that really matters, and the numbers would speak for itself. The numbers can’t be denied. The law of averages shall prevail. (I guess the Miami Heat figured that out last season because they finally won their championship)

 

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Memorable Quotes:

 

Billy: “Let them make the mistakes. When your enemy’s making mistakes, don’t interrupt them.”

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Peter: “People are overlooked for a variety of biased reasons and perceived flaws.”

 

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Bill James

 

Bill is known to be a sportswriter and a statistician that focused on baseball. His work is about the scientific analysis of baseball statistics in finding out how a team can win or lose games. Efficiency ratings, percentages, range factors, all of these stats are analyzed to provide an answer on how this can affect a victory or defeat.

 

Bill is part of the 2006 Top 100 Most influential people in the world according to Time Magazine.