Billy Beane did was go against the traditional techniques of drafting players by using a more economics-based approach to drafting and trading. Traditional scouting would use a more human approach and focus on basic stats such as batting average, runs batted in and stolen bases. Beane used a system called sabermetrics, that considered the economics along with the statistics of players, to ensure that his budget was spent wisely. Beane would draft players that he calculated as being drastically undervalued in the baseball markets. He then built an surprisingly competitive team filled with players who made fractions of their big league counterparts. This practice became known as “Moneyball” The book Moneyball follows the true story of how Billy Beane built a strong team while dealing with a much lower budget than big name MLB franchises. In 2002, the Oakland Athletics had a $41 million salary budget.
Now enter Brad Pitt, who was drawn to Moneyball, not so much for the Baseball history, but the human story of Billy Beane being an underdog challenging a time honored system. This “based on a true story” movie dealt with several problems during its production. It settled on its third director choice, with Sony having issues with the unconventional script for a sports movie. The script was re-written by Aaron Sorkin, famous for the West Wing series and more recently, The Social Network movie. And then by Steve Zaillian, famous for several movies such as Schindler’s List, Gangs of New York and more recently American Gangster.
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