The book “Moneyball” begins with the question of how the 2001-02 Oakland Athletics won so many games with such a low budget. I happened to see the movie version the other day.

Brad Pitt plays Billy Beane, the A’s general manager and the star of the book. Beane comes across in the book as a bit of a con artist, and that is downplayed some in the movie. In both the book and the movie, there’s a lot of focus on how Beane found a “market inefficiency” by finding lowly regarded players who actually had a lot of value and acquiring them to fit his low budget.

I will say the movie is very enjoyable and aces the difficult task of being very much about baseball while still appealing to non-baseball fans. To accomplish this, Beane is the hero, and pretty much anyone who disagrees with him is the villain.

The major league scouts are portrayed as inflexible old fogies who refuse to accept Beane’s way of thinking. The manager, Art Howe, apparently does absolutely nothing to help the team and instead constantly hurts it by failing to do exactly what Beane wants.

The movie tries to portray the 2002 A’s as along the same lines as the Cleveland Indians in “Major League” — a bunch of misfits who somehow banded together and won. To say this is an oversimplification is inaccurate — it’s more like a gross distortion. The A’s had three superb starting pitchers in Tim Hudson, Mark Mulder and Barry Zito, as well as stars such as Eric Chavez and Miguel Tejada. The movie ignores this, as well as the fact that the A’s were very lucky when it came to injuries that year (Think the inverse of this year’s Red Sox).

The thing is, “Moneyball” is a great book, a great story and a very entertaining movie — but the story itself isn’t that unusual. If you look at this year’s playoffs, the big-spending Yankees and Phillies made it, but so did the Diamondbacks and Rays, who are in the bottom 10 in the majors in payroll.

What’s funny is that author Michael Lewis mentioned this kind of phenomenon several times in the book, usually to point out how deceiving/out-of-touch baseball commissioner Bud Selig is about baseball economics.

Near the end of the book, Lewis mocks Selig for saying the A’s “are not viable without a new stadium.” Yet in an interview with Bob Costas on MLB Network less than a month ago, Beane himself blamed the same stadium for the A’s being unable to compete! “I’d like to see the people who follow this team, myself, and the people who work here have at least a fighting chance,” Beane said. “Until we get a new venue it’s going to be an uphill climb, and we’re slipping down that slope.”

I’m sorry, but that sounds like a cover-your-butt cop-out to me.

There’s a side issue here, about the stats guys, or sabermetricians (from the organization, The Society for American Baseball Research). They have done a lot of great work, and they’ve changed a lot about the game, but I’m still skeptical that they’re doing anywhere near as much as they think they are.

Believe me, I am not exaggerating when I say that if a scientist created a pill that made man immortal, the sabermetricians would say that this could not have happened without sabermetrics.

A lot of sabermetricians arrive at an answer with a formula, and decide it must be true because it was determined by math without taking the time to look at why that answer might or might not be true. One example is the statistic called WAR, or Wins Above Replacement level. Sounds pretty definitive, right? Sure, until you realize that the individual players’ wins above replacement don’t add up to a team’s wins above replacement, and the defenders of the stat say the differences are just luck.

But isn’t that what makes baseball so wonderful? Brian Sabean, the general manager of the San Francisco Giants, has been ridiculed for years by the sabermetric community because he is the face of The Guys Who Refuse To See The Power In The New Stats (or as, the sabermetric community would call them, The Guys Who Refuse To See The Truth). I love that, that teams can use completely different approaches to winning, and each have success.

I’m glad “Moneyball” was made. I love that a big star like Brad Pitt starred in a sports movie and didn’t have to be a clown. I’m just surprised, because the story wasn’t that unusual.

“Moneyball” is a beautiful story and a well-executed movie. But if you watched baseball this season, you’ve already seen the main idea.

Matt DiFilippo — 861-9243

mdifilippo@centralmaine.com

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