The Plot Holes of Moneyball

No one has ever been more upset to lose reliver Jason Isringhausen than the characters in Bennett Miller's 2011 classic Moneyball. It's not that the Oakland A's lost borderline Hall of Famers Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon to free agency after the 2001 season, but also Jason Isringhausen?! My stars, how will Billy Beane ever recover!?

Listen, I get it. In the film, the 2002 Oakland A's appear to be one of the worst teams in the league held together by rubber bands and Scotch tape. The film needs to creatively, yet realistically show the internal struggle that was at the heart of Michael Lewis's New York Times Best Seller of the same name: a team fighting back against the traditionalism of Baseball using advanced statistics. As such, a closer like Jason Isringhausen needs to be lumped in with Giambi and Damon and his loss needs to be also treated with the utmost reverence. 

In reality, the 2002 A's, even without Jason Giambi and Johnny Damon, and yes, even without Jason Isringhausen, were a damn good team. Oakland still had stud third baseman Eric Chavez, future World Series MVP Jermaine Dye, 2002 MVP Miguel Tejada and one of the best rotations since the mid-90's Atlanta Braves including a young Aaron Harang and Cory Liddle and the fearsome trio of Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson, and 2002 AL Cy Young winner Barry Zito. 

The lack of players not discussed in the film and the rotation that's rarely discussed in the book as well seems to be the main sticking point with a lot of fans. Sure Scott Hatteberg and David Justice were fine players, but you're not going to mention that both the AL MVP and the AL Cy Young came from this team as well? How dare you sir!

Again, I get it. It's hard to adapt a book that's all over the place that Moneyball actually is while also still including its themes all while making it palatable for a mainstream audience. As such, the film overwhelming is a creative success, even though it comes at the expense of the majority of excellent players.

But that's not what this blog post is about. I'm not here to discuss the differences between the film and what actually occurred in real life. I'm here to discuss the plot holes that exist solely within the text of the film. If you want more information about many major differences between the film and historical record, I'll put a list together at the end. But for now, here's the glaring errors I notice when watching the film for the 50th time. These are the plot holes of Moneyball.

Moneyball: The Movie Trailer

Get excited

Moneyball The Movie Update: Actor Chris Pratt Joins Cast

According to a promotional representative working with Sony films on the motion picture production of the award winning sabermetrics novel Moneyball, Chris Pratt has joined the cast of the film to play former A's 1B Scott Hatteberg (the guy Joey Votto unseated in Cincinnati in 2008). Per the press release:

Los Angeles (July 13, 2010) – Chris Pratt star of the NBC hit comedy series “Parks and Recreation” has joined the cast of “Moneyball” which includes Brad Pitt, Robyn Wright, Jonah Hill and Philip Seymour Hoffman. Pratt will star as former Oakland Athletics 1st Baseman Scott Hatteberg.

The Bennett Miller-directed baseball project is being produced by Scott Rudin and Michael DeLuca and was written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin, based on Michael Lewis’ 2003 nonfiction book about Oakland Athletics GM Billy Beane and his strategy for building a successful team without paying players enormous salaries.

Chris Pratt is quickly establishing himself as one of today’s most versatile young actors in film and television. In film, Pratt just completed shooting a role opposite Anna Faris in the Fox comedy What’s Your Number also starring Chris Evans. Pratt will next be seen in the Universal Pictures film Young Americans also starring Faris and Topher Grace due out in January, 2011. Additional films Pratt has starred in include Wanted, Bride Wars and Jennifer’s Body. Chris Pratt is represented by Mosaic, CAA and attorney Peter Nelson.

I'm excited for the release of this film, which has been in the works for years now, but am sincerely hoping it takes a less overly dramatic direction than last year's The Blind Side, based on a different Michael Lewis book.

Billy Beane doesn't just draft baseball players (he also drafts women)

As an avid follower of the Moneyball Movie genesis (there's other posts about it floating around this blog without the proper tags for some reason...), I was absolutely devastated when I found out that the movie was initially canceled. Although the film seemed surreal (Brad Pitt, Steven Soderbergh, Dmitri Martin, Scott Hatteberg...what?) and although Moneyball seemed like it would be the absolutely last book ever turned into a movie, stranger things have been accomplished. Unfilmable movies like Watchmen and A Clockwork Orange became great films.

Alas, I digress. The movie has been re-greenlighted without Soderbergh on board. What shocks me, however, and provides the basis for this post, is that, as an avid Moneyball movie tracker, I missed this amazing article which revealed the existence of a Moneyball sex scene in the film's original draft!

A PDF of the script (which has since been taken down) was floating around the internet at the time, which

"...even includes a scene in which the Oakland GM hits up an Outback Steakhouse in Cleveland with Paul DePodesta and orders a Bloomin' Onion.

Later, Zaillian portrays Beane doing the most logical thing after eating a plate of fried onions with tangy sauce ... having sex with the waitress who served it to him."

Classic, right? The best part of The Big League Stew's article is the rationalization of why this scene was probably cut from the rewrite:

Perhaps Soderbergh deleted this scene and Pascal thought the absence of chain restaurant-related romance would hurt the film's test scores among women?

We wouldn't want a movie about baseball statistics and 30 year old men who live in their mom's basements to alienate the female audience with a sex scene now, would we?