I watched Moneyball (2012, Dir. Bennett Miller) for the first time in a while and although this is a well-made film with strong performances and a really terrific score, it always leaves me flat. The film gets some interesting things right … finding hidden value in Scott Hatteberg out of position and having his best season at the plate. But it gets a lot of seemingly important facts wrong. The lengthy discussion about Chad Bradford as an ideal player to target (per Hill as the Paul DePodesta stand in) makes no sense. Bradford was already on the A’s the previous season. The draft scene is hilarious when you consider most of those picks, including the centerpiece, Jeremy Brown, did not pan out at all. The film makes no mention of the three top-tier pitchers (Mulder, Hudson and Zito) who anchored the pitching staff or the MVP season from SS Miguel Tejada, guys who were already there before this invented cone to Jesus moment about math and baseball.
The film notes that Boston used “some of the same ideas” to finally win it all in 2004. But do they mean a focus on walks and on base percentage? Hell, the Yankees’ dynasty was built on young players taught to work the count, wear out pitchers, etc.
Oh, and like the Yankees Boston did that good old fashioned thing of trading for and signing away big ticket players (Martinez, Ramirez, Schilling). But nah. They followed the Jeremy Brown blueprint, right?
Long story short, I know too much about baseball in that era to really dig Moneyball. What movie takes you down that same nitpicky rabbithole?
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/vhfqxq/what_movies_annoy_you_only_because_you_know_too/
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