Moneyball

Moneyball is a 2011 American film based on the best-selling book of the same name, following the Real Life story of Billy Beane.

Billy goes through a bit of a depression after a post season loss to the New York Yankees as he realizes that with his ballclub's meager salary, they just can't compete with the likes of teams that spend three times the amount of money they can. Destiny along with the Cleveland Indians put Billy together with Peter Brand as they start using Bill James-style statistics (aka: Sabermetrics) to rebuild the Oakland Athletics into a League powerhouse once again.

The film stars Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill; Aaron Sorkin served as a co-writer of the movie's screenplay. The movie was nominated for six Academy Awards: Best Picture, Actor, Supporting Actor, Adapted Screenplay, Editing and Sound Mixing.

Tropes used in Moneyball include:

• Adaptational Attractiveness: The real Billy Beane is not an unattractive man, but he's no Brad Pitt.
• Affectionate Parody: A fake trailer was posted for "Too Much Moneyball" featuring the 2009 Yankees and their buying a World Series.
• Amicably Divorced: Billy and Sharon don't bicker or argue as much as one might expect given the situation.
• Based on a True Story: One could argue Very Loosely Based on a True Story. While the on-field results and details of player transactions are completely accurate, there is a fair bit of rearranging of characters and lines, including the complete omission of Michael Lewis (the author of the original book), and a number of people who claim they were portrayed unfairly, particularly Art Howe.
• Beleaguered Assistant: Peter Brand gets colored this way, but it's mainly just him learning the ropes.
• Bittersweet Ending: The A's go on an unprecedented 20-game win streak but lose in the playoffs. Billy is offered a 12.5-million dollar contract — the highest offered for a baseball GM at that time — to GM for the Red Sox and seriously considers it but ultimately decides to stay with the A's, content to know that he's changed the game for the better.
• Broken Streak: Averted. The A's go up 11-0 on the Royals and look like they'll cruise to their record 20th straight victory. The Royals gradually chip away at the lead and manage to tie the game 11-11...and then the A's Scott Hatteberg hits a walk-off home run in the 9th inning.
• Boring but Practical: The various players that Beane wants on the team, in spite of their various faults, simply because they can get on base reliably.
• The Cameo: Bobby Kotick of Activision/Blizzard as team owner Stephen Schott.
• Composite Character: Peter Brand was based on a group of Beane's assistants/deputies, primarily Paul DePodesta, whose request not to have his name used in the film is what partially led to this.
  • When director Steven Soderbergh was attached to direct, DePodesta was one of the characters. Demetri Martin was to have played him but production was shut down a few days in.
• Daddy's Girl: Casey Beane and her adorable song where she repeatedly calls her father a loser.
• Epic Fail: Subverted. They watch a video of a minor league game, in which an insecure player trips rounding First Base and crawls in a panic to get his hand back on the base, only for the bemused first baseman of the other team to tell the player he smashed the ball over the fence for a home run.
• The Film of the Book
• Game of Nerds: Naturally. Beane uses statistics to change the way the Oakland A's recruit players and play the game.
• Intelligence Equals Isolation: Peter Brand is frequently depicted as working in his office alone on his computer (this portrayal is apparently what led DePodesta to withdraw permission to be portrayed). Beane has to coax him to go on a road trip with the team, where he sits next to David Justice still typing away.
• It Will Never Catch On: The concept of Sabremetrics, which drives the plot.
• Jerkass: Art Howe. In real life, Beane fired him following the loss to Minnesota. Unsurprisingly, the real Art Howe was one of the movie's most vocal critics.
• Only in It For the Money: Averted. At the end of the film, Beane turns down 12.5 million dollars to stay with the A's.
• Opposing Sports Team: Highlighted with the Yankees, as per their contractual arrangement to be the villain in any baseball movie not starring them. They don't appear as villains on the field (the team's final defeat comes at the hands of the Minnesota Twins, as it did in real life), but they are held up throughout the movie as the shining example of the big-market team against whom the small-market Athletics are trying to compete financially.
• Playing Against Type: Jonah Hill in a dramatic role.
• Put Me in Coach: Manager Art Howe refuses to play Scott Hatteberg at first base because of Hatteberg's lack of experience. Beane trades the player ahead of Hatteberg on the depth chart, forcing Howe to finally play him. The A's become very good very fast.
• Ragtag Bunch of Misfits: Justified. They deliberately choose players who are undervalued due to perceived flaws.
• Reality Subtext: Paul DePodesta's change of heart about how he was portrayed led to the composite character of Peter Brand being written in his place.
• Red Oni, Blue Oni: Billy Beane and Peter Brand.
• Screw the Rules, I Have Money: Inverted. A more appropriate name would be, "Screw The Rules, I Don't Have Money."
• Spiritual Successor: To The Social Network, another Aaron Sorkin scripted film Based on a True Story about a subject that at first glance would not seem to be an interesting one to make a movie about.
• Timeshifted Actor: Billy as a young man.
• Unlikely Hero: Light-hitting Scott Hatteberg hits a walkoff homer.
• What Could Have Been: The movie began production with Steven Soderbergh directing and Demetri Martin in the Jonah Hill role. After Soderbergh turned in his first dailies, Sony found his part-scripted, part-documentary, part-animation (which had Bill James voicing himself, explaining the idea of Sabremetrics) approach unmarketable and he was fired after about a week of shooting. The production was shut down for a year while Aaron Sorkin was brought to do rewrites and after Bennett Miller was hired to direct, production finally restarted.