20 straight games.................in the big leagues.........Tom Hanks.......

Plot[edit]

Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane (Brad Pitt) is upset by his team's loss to the New York Yankees in the 2001 postseason, after the Yankees overcame a 2–0 series deficit. With the impending departure of star players Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi, and Jason Isringhausen to free agency, Beane needs to assemble a competitive team for 2002, but must overcome Oakland's limited payroll. During a visit to the Cleveland Indians, Beane meets Peter Brand (Jonah Hill), a young Yale economics graduate with radical ideas about how to assess players' value. Beane tests Brand's theory by asking whether he would have drafted him (out of high school), Beane having been a Major League player before becoming general manager. Though scouts considered Beane a phenomenal prospect, his career in the Major Leagues was disappointing. After some prodding, Brand admits that he would not have drafted him until the ninth round and surmised that Beane would probably have accepted a scholarship to Stanford instead. Impressed, Beane hires the inexperienced Brand to be the Athletics assistant general manager.

Oakland team scouts are first dismissive and then hostile towards Brand's non-traditional sabermetric approach to scouting players. Most notably, Grady Fuson (Ken Medlock) takes to the radio airwaves after being fired by Beane and doubts the team's future. Rather than relying on the scouts' experience and intuition, Brand selects players based almost exclusively on their on-base percentage (OBP). Despite vehement objections from the scouts, Beane signs the players Brand suggests, such as unorthodox submarine pitcher Chad Bradford (Casey Bond), past-his-prime outfielder David Justice (Stephen Bishop) and injured Scott Hatteberg (Chris Pratt). Beane finds that he also faces opposition from Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the Athletics' manager, who does not agree with the new philosophy. With tensions already high between the two due to a contract dispute, Howe disregards Beane's and Brand's strategy and plays a lineup he prefers. Beane eventually trades away the lone traditional first baseman, Carlos Peña, to force Howe to use Hatteberg at that position.

Early in the season, the Athletics fare poorly, leading critics to dismiss the new method as a failure. Beane convinces the owner to stay the course and the team's record improves. Eventually, the Athletics win 19 consecutive games, tying for the longest winning streak in American League history. Beane's young daughter implores him to go to the A's next game against the Kansas City Royals, where Oakland is already leading 11–0 after the third inning and appears set to advance their winning streak to a record-breaking 20. Like many baseball players, Beane is superstitious and avoids games in progress, but upon hearing how well the game is going on the radio, he decides to go. Beane arrives in the fourth inning, only to watch the team go to pieces and eventually allow the Royals to even the score at 11. Finally, the A's do win, on a walk-off home run by Hatteberg. Yet the A's again lose in the postseason, this time to the Minnesota Twins. Beane is disappointed, believing nothing short of a championship should be considered a success.

Beane is contacted by the owner of the Boston Red Sox, who realizes that the sabermetric model is the future of baseball. The Sox had been one of the earliest subjects of a statistical study. Renowned Harvard statisticianFrederick Mosteller had conducted the first academic investigation of baseball after the Sox, whom he loved, lost the 1946 World Series.

The Red Sox owner offers Beane a job as general manager of the Red Sox. Beane passes up the opportunity, despite the $12.5 million salary, which would have made him the highest-paid general manager in sports history. He returns to Oakland to continue managing the Athletics, while a title card reveals that two years later the Red Sox won the 2004 World Series using the model pioneered by the Athletics.

Cast[edit]

• Brad Pitt as Billy Beane, general manager of the Oakland Athletics
• Jonah Hill as Peter Brand, Beane's assistant general manager
• Philip Seymour Hoffman as Art Howe, the manager of the Oakland Athletics
• Chris Pratt as Scott Hatteberg, A's first baseman
• Casey Bond as Chad Bradford, A's submarine relief pitcher
• Stephen Bishop as David Justice, A's outfielder
• Royce Clayton as Miguel Tejada, A's shortstop
• David Hutchison as John Mabry, A's utility player
• Nick Porrazzo as Jeremy Giambi, A's outfielder
• Robin Wright as Sharon, Beane's ex-wife and mother of Casey
• Kerris Dorsey as Casey Beane
• Ken Medlock as Grady Fuson, head scout of the Oakland Athletics
• Nick Searcy as Matt Keough
• Jack McGee as John Poloni, scout for the Oakland Athletics