A family friend of mine was a college baseball scout for some 30 years, and he loves how accurate this scene is. Scouts get very proud and chippy about their “intuition & expertise”, and don’t want to admit that a lot of scouting is luck and guesswork. It’s closer to gambling than to a science as a profession.
Whats cool is, well ill speak for hockey here, but a lot of U18 and NCAA keep track of their advanced stats. So its not like scouts cant make at least educated guesses based on a larger pool!
@@letangier2385 You’re implying that baseball doesn’t keep track of more advanced stats as well? His point is that they can’t afford to JUST look at the normal stats, because they can’t afford players based on the classic stats. They need a new way of looking at the stats.
Lot of truth in that. Just think of all those 'surefire' high school and college phenoms that never made it to the big leagues. Jeff Ledbetter comes to mind.
@@jamesanthony5681 the book has a simplified look at drafting pitchers and how a college pitcher is 4x more likely to make it to the majors than a pitcher drafted out of high school. The book was written almost twenty years ago now though, so I’m not sure if that stat has changed.
The older gentleman with the hearing aid and green jacket is Phil Pote, a dear friend of mine who recently passed away. Phil was a longtime scout for the Dodgers, A's and Mariners. The man with the half glasses is George Vranau, who has scouted with the MLB Bureau, Reds, Pirates and Brewers. Also a friend and one of the finest people in the industry.
@@osamaz2780 Fabio is an Italian model and he’s been around for a long time The old man asking who’s Fabio? And another old dude next to him Saying he’s a shortstop from Seattle
@@setnomA The funniest part of this is that Mariners and the Athletics are in the same division so theres no way that scout would mistaken any Mariner players but it adds to the scene I guess
@@kainashhsuThe reference to Fabio is not a baseball reference at all. That’s what makes it funny. These guys are buried in baseball and don’t know that Fabio is a well known model. He has just stated that they are focused on how people “look” and they are not in the business of selling blue jeans. If they were, then they’d need Fabio. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fabio_Lanzoni
8 лет назад
They're looking for good players and these scouts here saying shit like "the guy has a nice jawline" and "he's a good looking player." Shit cracks me up hahaha
Yup. Championships don't necessarily mean profit maximization. In this day and age, it's also about who buys the players' jerseys in the mall and other merchandise.
"He's the kinda guy who walks into a room and his dick has already been there for 2 minutes." - This shit has me rolling my ass on the floor. I love these comedians man... 1:15
I agree! I’m no fan of Pitt, but this was oscar level. Really, I have one tiny little complaint about this entire film, and that was his delivery of “adapt or die”. But I can overlook that because the rest of his performance was top notch!
Another great line is "Organ donors for the rich." It stinks that the fat cats drain the poverty row teams because some G.D. judge was bought out by the Yankees and whatever other teams chipped in, so that we have an elite in baseball of Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs, Red Sox, Cardinals, and maybe a couple other borderline elitist teams.
Then there's another 10 feet of crap and the Rays....How is it fair that a team can spend 4 times the amount of money of another? There needs to be a cap because the current system is a joke
Baseball isn't just a game about hitting, pitching and fielding. It's a game of capitalism at it's finest. There's no real spending restrictions. My team vs your team, no holds barred. Some teams buy talent, other develop it. All play in a system of some kind. It's beautiful. Rarely does the team that spends the most actually win it all though.
Sure, the TOP spending team rarely wins it all. However, statistically, the winner is typically a high spending team. Since 2000, there's only been one winner that was in the bottom half of the league in spending (2003 Florida Marlins - who were 25th). Otherwise, every other team was in the top half of the league in spending. Money provides a sizable advantage and this particular case with Billy Beane and the A's shows that. Despite revolutionizing the game of baseball, it resulted in ZERO championships.
I find that flawed. They obviously means he seems like he has potential to hit well, everything seems to be fine but he needs a bit more to become good. The thing is, they have no money for that
I have to agree. Hitting is mechanical (duh) and you can observe what the guy does well. As much as I loved the stats boom of the 1990's, I think it swung so far anti-scouting that people forgot that sometimes simple observation can be really powerful of an evaluation tool. If you watched a prime Ken Griffey Jr. take batting practice, you know you have talent. If you relied only on proprietary stats, you might be missing a big chunk of the picture.
@@youngcitybandit then the correct statement should have been "He has the potential to be a good hitter"... because being a good hitter implies you are already... good.
I use this clip (minus some of the saucier bits) to teach MBA marketing students about defining problems, not just diving into solutions. This is a brilliant movie that happens to include baseball players. I watch it at least 10 times a year, I never get tired of it.
I used to be in retail sales. (Thank God I got out of that.) We had a district manager who had to be one of the all-time unhelpful superiors. There was no point in going to him with any problem. None. In three years, I only heard him offer the two following suggestions: 1. "Sell more". 2. "Fire the manager". That's it. That was the sum total of his wisdom. I sincerely hope that you are more of a help to your students than that man was to us. BTW: That company has since folded.
@@briancooper4959 Obviously not a good leader. Good leaders see themselves as your supporter, not someone to only report to and follow orders. No wonder they went out of business. Hopefully that experience makes you a better leader, having seen what doesn’t work.
@@mayhemjr.803 it’s because everyone else started playing moneyball but with more money. It’s like if the lakers get lebron to get a leg up but then every other team including the warriors add a clone of lebron, it takes away the statistical advantage.
+ChristopherFrankTV what the hell, you completely missed the entire point of the movie! They replaced this unscientific talk with analytics - MONEYBALL.
7 лет назад
I understand the entire point. I'm a huge Mets fan and Sandy Alderson is our GM. He's one of the champions of "scientific"/sabermetrics. My point is that they're only a guide and that humans aren't numbers and can't be reduced to stats.
That was the flaw of Moneyball, they would not take a chance on talent. In the end there has to be talent which is why the A's lost all the time. Through stats they are able to build competitive teams to win in the long run, but in a short series when pitching staffs are reduced you need talent. Money ball to me is the Martyball of baseball. Conservative, wins a lot of regular season games, but doesn't put you over the hump to win in the playoffs. The proof is in the pudding, the A's has one only one playoff series with Moneyball.
MultiJimbo777 Fabio was a male model, famous for being used on the covers of many, many romance novels in the 80's. The old gentleman certainly wouldn't be conversant with male models, and apparently he doesn't know the lineup for the Mariners, either. It's just a cute throwaway joke.
I remember that the joke actually made it into the trailer. I was thinking "the joke only works if people know who Fabio is. Do enough people watching a baseball movie trailer know this?"
You could hear my bat all over the ballpark, too. Even when I missed. Here’s the pitch. (Me: “WHAM!”) Whoa, sounds like he got all of that one, but it’s strike three again…
I love this scene as it demonstrates how leadership can be empowering, even if using colorful language. Brad's character knows that he can't just come out and say what he thinks, he needs to get everyone else to come to him and then he hits them with the reality. Buy-in is hard to get as the outsider. He's trying to show that they're all trying to solve the surface level problem and not the underlying issue that will continue to plague them. They're looking at bandaid fixes to the 'obvious' problem instead of real fixes and plans to address the actual problem. I work in software development and I can't tell you how many times I'm chatting with analysts/architects who, as experienced as the are, often get attracted to doing a half measure to make the customer happy without addressing the actual design flaw that's led to the problem. And often the case is they aren't appreciating what the actual problem is. Addressing exactly what the customer is running into isn't necessarily the solution that makes the product better. It might get this customer off our backs today, but tomorrow another customer will run into a similar problem.
Unfortunately, very few people can even open their minds to let alone handle a fundamental paradigm shift. The cognitive dissonance is too much of a roadblock. Really the only solution was letting these geezers go or letting them walk on their own; still entrenched in hocus pocus and superstition surrounding some arcane factors of baseball would have prevented them from ever coming on board with mathematically computed analytics about players' stats and performances. They had to be left in the dust.
What's great about this movie is the realistic reactions of the other scouts. Billy was trying to introduce a completely new strategy to people who have used the same methodologies for years, if not decades. Of course they're gonna push back, not see his perspective and argue with each other. It makes it all the more satisfying to watch Billy succeed later.
@@StaySqueezy12 baseball seems pretty good to me right now. of course there are always fans who thought it was "better back in the day" which is rarely true.
Not quite. The movie made some of these guys look like idiots, but they do look at players' statistics. What statistics don't tell a big league GM is whether or not a player can hit the curve or have the bat speed to hit big league pitching. That's why you need these guys.
This is why I LOVE this movie. It really challenges the archaic thinking of these older guys still involved in the game. The game isn't the same, Billy knew that, and knew if he didn't have the money to build a team, he'd have to change his approach. These guys were so focused on bullshit that they didn't see they were killing the ball club and blaming Billy for their own mistakes!
The game was never as the scouts saw it. Never. It's just that their ways and philosophy's had become intrenched after 100+ years. What changed was the invention of desktop business computers that enabled people like Pete to do previously impossible in-depth analysis that demonstrated that the old ways were just BS.
As Patrice O'Neal would have called it, "the scene where the evil (or problem) is explained." Moneyball has two of those scenes. The second scene is in the parking garage with Brad Pitt and Jonah Hill.
This is what many - not all - people sound like when considering a candidate for president. Relatively few focus on a candidate's policies or political philosophy and instead fixate on their intangibles.
When it comes to a lot of political issues, nobody seems to ask the simple question Billy Beane is asking: "What's the problem?" Everyone is so busy throwing out their solutions that no one even thinks to considering what the problem is.
Simplifying the presidency down to simply only a singular "problem" is a problem in itself. It belies the actual complexity of governing a country of 330 million people. There are thousands of daily problems and they have overlapping effects on one another. This simplistic thinking is too dangerous regardless of who you thought should be president.
He wasn't wrong. Fabio Polanco played SS for the Seattle Mariners. Money Ball is based on the 2002 Season, and Fabio played for Seattle from 1994 to 2008. THIS is what is intended to make the joke actually funny. Not that the guy thinks Fabio plays for Seattle... but that he's right.
@@theclimbto1 there was never a ball player named Fabio Polanco you literally just pulled that out of your ass lol. You’re probably thinking of Placido Polanco, who played during that same time period, but he never played for the Mariners
@@theclimbto1 The joke is funny because Pitt is referring to Fabio, the popular male model. The answer was just to satisfy the old gent so they could move on to the next subject, of signing David Justice to the bare minimum.
The movie was great but not necessarily accurate. Sandy Alderson was Oakland’s GM before Billy Beane and he was the one who started embracing analytics long before the 2002 season. Plus, these “inept” scouts landed the ace pitching staff and role players who were arguably a main reason the A’s won that year. The movie makes no mention of the starting rotation which included Barry Zito who DOMINATED that year. A dominant pitcher can carry almost any team on their backs...the replacements Beane scouted did play well, but were only a piece of the puzzle despite this movies portrayal of them being THE reason
@@pts5217 if you read the book monsyball; it talks about how all of those same scouts adamantly spoke out against drafting Barry Z because he was a “soft tossing” pitcher in college
Watching this movie I got the feeling that this must be what it's like whenever some new idea or way of doing things comes in to challenge the old way of doing things; whether it's in a business, a corporation, an organization, or even the military. The "Old Guard" is set in their ways and beliefs, convinced they are right, and resist any and all change.
The problem with being an "out of the box thinker", is that you eventually run afoul of the people who are box devotees, and the big money interests building and selling boxes to them. In the military, you get Admirals and Generals who've spent their entire careers promoting their version of the perfect box. Anyone with new idea that challenges their boxes is treated like a heretic.
@@jamesanthony5681 Well then, either knowingly or unknowingly, you are part of the Big Box conglomerate; and like Big Oil, Big Tobacco, or Big Pharma, are part of the conspiracy to push your products on a unsuspecting public for maximum profit, with total disregard for the harm they cause people or the environment.😀
Sure but honestly. Ugly Girlfriend = no confidence. There will ALWAYS be guys sick her shit but if you are crazy fucking hot as a girl you wont be single.
i know a guy in boston triple a.. his gf is a bae ... so why he cant be in the roster?? its crap.... pitch and hit and you be in the major leagues no matter ur gf looks like
like Kid Rock said after he was caught cheating on Pamela Anderson and was asked why he would cheat when he had such a hot girlfriend...his response? even sold gold pussy gets boring after a while...
woooow! his performance is awesome in this movie! Totally agree! I sometimes re- watch it using boxxy software cause it has many dubbed and subtitle languages
I was more impressed by Phillip Seymor Hoffman. Dude had some range. Went from being Brandt in the Grand Lebowski to Art Howe in Moneyball with a ton of underappreciated performances in between. That dude truly was an actor. RIP.
I love this scene; it clearly states the problem Beane is trying to solve, and it's not a problem anyone in that room is equipped to address. When we meet Peter Brand a couple scenes later, and Brand immediately speaks directly to Billy's problem as a fan of baseball and an economics expert, it kicks off the movie in earnest and feels like a breath of fresh air, but only because this scene works so well at describing "the crystal ball" or "magic tea leaves" these recruiters are trying to interpret with each player. I don't know much about baseball, but I liked this movie a lot for presenting a case of how to think differently about a problem.
This scene illustrates the shift in paradigm. The scouts are relying on a system of sorting players of unknown potential by phenotype, then hoping that professional training will develop superlative players. The general manager knows that the richer teams will skim off the cream of that process. What Billy ends up doing is sifting through data for under appreciated diamonds in the rough after that player has developed a pool of statistics at the professional level.
@@cornholio0339 Exactly. If you have money AND you can identify all talent, not just the obvious ones, then you basically have a monopoly on the situation. The Red Sox are the perfect example of this. As long as they continue investing in Sabermetrics, and continue being one of the richest teams, they'll always contend because even if they make mistakes (like the Sandoval deal) they'll be covered by the plethora of talent coming through their minors system, or any and all free agents out there. Its a win-win
@@patrickrezek2921 it's hard to explain, just funny. Pitt is referring to Fabio, a former male model in the 80's. The old scout instead thinks he's referring to an actual player.
This scene speaks to me and describes how many people don't look at the actual problem or the bigger picture. My parents are very much like these people but when it comes to money and their spending habits only saying we are broke and how its a problem but fail to ever realize their poor spending choices are the reason they are broke towards the end of the month. People need to hit problems at the source and adapt according to the situation.
I kind of understood where he was going with that, though!! it could suggest something about a young man's self-esteem if he's got a so-called ugly (or mediocre) looking girlfriend despite being good enough at baseball to garner serious attention from pro scouts. It COULD also suggest the kid is humble, with a high quality personality and high quality outlook on what is important in life... but let's face it in the real world it is more likely to suggest the former.
@@bobshenix Nobody would ever use how hot they think the players girlfriend is if they would sign him or what would be his contract... looks are all subjective in the first place
"Awww you guys are full of it, Artie is right, this guy has got an attitude, I mean the attitude is good, he's the kinda guy that walks into a room and his dick has already been there for like 2 minutes!!" The back and forth conversations in this scene and others in this film are so fluid and natural it makes me wonder if it was all scripted. It's almost like the director just told them all to sit down around a table, start talking sports and we will edit it all out later. These scenes remind me of chats I've had with friends about sports!!!
A lot of scouts still pick players like this. And you can find Great Players like this. Because usually Tarzan plays like Tarzan. It's when you pick a Tarzan and he plays like Jane that you're in trouble. Billy isn't looking for Tarzan, because the Yankees will just take him away in 2-3 Years. Billy is looking for guys YOU DO NOT WANT, Guys you passed over or are actively getting rid of. Then, of that group he's seeing who can do the things that need to be done, over time, to compile Wins. And it's not always 60 Home Runs. Sometimes it is, it certainly helps... but you aren't in the Market to compete for those so good luck with that. You're looking for guys that, even after you Win, everyone else says "Yet, but this flaw and that flaw". You're also looking for guys that when you lose them, you can replace them... cheaply again. What Scouts did for decades works. We can all look at LeBron James and understand that the odds are, he's going to be a really good basketball player. And if your Team can afford 5 of those guys, you'd probably Win a lot of games. It's easy for pick 'The Best Player' out of a line-up... it's much harder to be the Team that is in position to acquire that Player. Money Ball isn't about finding Good Players. Money Ball is not, and never will be, about finding Great Players. It's about finding the flawed bastards that happen to do very specific things, that when added to other flawed bastards and their specific things, results in Wins. To this day, you want to find a Great Player, you start with the guys that LOOK like Great Players. That have the build, the size, the measurables. You don't start with that 5'1" guy over there that's rocking 33% Body Fat. Sure, every now and then you'll find a John Kruk or Mo Vaughn or Dmitri Young. Hell, Babe Ruth didn't look like a Ball Player. He just played like one. But you took one look at Babe when he sent the ball out of the park, and now you're talking about how "The ball explodes off his bat" and "Classic swing". Might even bring up how Babe ain't hooking up with no 6's, guy has Confidence. They do it that way because it's worked a lot for a long time. No matter what system you use, people will be missed. Any Great Player passed on because he didn't look the part, ALSO failed to PLAY the part when given try outs. And if they were that good, they likely had many Try Outs... and never shined in any of them. Potentially "Great Players" aren't missed because old men think their girlfriend is ugly. They are missed because, when afforded an opportunity, they didn't shine. Which calls in to question how great they could have really been.
My uncle played catcher for Univ. of Santa Clara in the 70s. It was a good program at the time. Anyway, he went out one night with boys for some beers and a Royals scout called his house and wanted to talk to him. My uncle's girlfriend picks up the phone and tells him he went out partying with friends. The scout never called back.
@@williamdougherty5347 Oh, I know. I grew up 40 miles from Pittsburgh and, as I mention, am a lifelong Pirates fan. I remember when they were good. The problem is how long it's been since they were.
@@ToddPataky Well, there were years when their team payroll was literally smaller than their luxury tax receipts, so you can't blame that on the unfairness of the game, but owners who didn't want to invest in quality players.
I'm also a lifelong Pirates fan, and honestly it's not the payroll alone that's the issue. Bob Nutting is literally the worst team owner in American professional sports. The team develops good players, and he lets them go to other teams. If I had to point to something really unfair, it's the play-off system. You play 162 fucking games, and they let geography decide who makes it to the big show. Division winners get sucked off, and the teams in 2nd that play in a tough division get shafted. That was the Pirates for 3 years thanks to the Cards/Cubs being just as good. The Cubs/Giants trotted out their ace pitcher, and a World Series contending club sank back into mediocrity.
*But I doubt these scouts were checking that out. And if they were, it was through the naked eye.* Why would you say that? It seems like a pretty arbitrary prejudice that you can't credit people with the ability to make an empirical estimate of the value of something that they don't fully have the tools to measure scientifically
the speed at which the ball leaves the bat (and launch angle which is also a new thing they like to look at) determines where the ball ends up/ how fast it gets there thus how long the fielder has to get to the ball
Gotta love the scout with the glasses in the back who’s only concerned with the “looks” lmao. According to the book this is how these meetings actually go... kinda makes you wonder.
The amazing in-joke of Brad Pitt delivering the line “the same good body nonsense like we’re selling jeans” is almost on par with Sean Bean in the Council of Elrond in The Martian.
This is basically the scene I thought of when the last dance is telling us MJ could have made the MLB. A guy batting .202 in AA is suddenly going to put it all together at the MLB level…
The truly weird thing is: -Damon was only with the A's that one season, and it was one of his worst. -Isringhausen was only with them a couple seasons and only got mentioned at the start of the film. Both him and Pena received a bit more praise than usual. -Bradford and Jeremy Giambi were already with the team in 2001. -Nowhere in the film are Zito-Hudson-Mulder even mentioned, along with Tejada-Chavez-Dye, despite contributing greatly.
What I enjoyed about this experiment was that the implementation of these metrics in the poorest market, showed that the metrics themselves could work, despite scouts like these guys and a manager like Howe. I don't know if the A's scouts or Art Howe were so retro grouchy but is drove the narrative for this film. My point is, once the rest of the league found out about it, and applied a larger budget, it changed the game. I am not sure it improved the game. I love the scrappy dog kind of teams, but pro ball clubs only have farm teams to advance the meat, not win games. I had season tix for the Lake Elsinore Storm during the 2000 and 2001 years. Steroids were abundant and the game was fast. The game has become human again and I really am enjoying baseball again
I love when he finally brings the numbers to them and they hate every single one of his picks and says "they get on base" they finally cant respond. 10 guys at the table just got replaced by an algorithm
Continuity error: At 3:00 Grady Fuston is holding a black barrel Parker Jotter pen, at 3:08, it's a blue Paper Mate Write Bros. 3:18 it's back to the Parker Jotter.
what they did last season was really something special. i knew there was no chance in hell they could repeat or even crack top 4 this season with all the new hirings in terms of managers and players.
agreed brother. Despite the impressiveness of what Oakland did, it still hasn't translated into championships. i'm an American who doesn't really care that much about European club soccer...but that Leicester City campaign was awesomely ridiculous. I can honestly say we probably won't ever see something like that for a very long time. It was a truly special season
im sure there'll be an awesome movie about Leicester city impossible season one day. It might take 20 years but it'll be done. 5000 to 1 and they defied the odds. Can't wait for the movie:D
georgetapadbol you do know that the Leicester scouts used data analysis to find Kante, mahrez etc. And not the 'old-fashioned scouting. That's how they managed to buy them for so cheap
Tossing around potential to a guy touted as one of the greatest talents when drafted and failing is like telling your mechanic buddy for 20 years that the car sitting in your garage in pieces is a great hot rod.
The Head Scout is my former pitching coach from High School, Ken Medlock, and the shorter older Scout is my former Manager, Art Harris. Venice High School, CA, ‘73-‘76. Didn’t realize they were in this movie until I saw it at the theater.
It's hard to believe this is how they used to assess players. The sad part is, this is probably how people in the workplace are evaluated, since they really don't have solid stats the way sports do.
They make these scouts seem like morons, but to be fair, the A's produced a LOT of talent from their scouting department, which is exactly why it all gets bought up by the bigger payroll teams. They never would have found these players in the first place if not for these old scouts.
Contrast to say, Bescuse of old ideas and attitude from this old scout team , Okland lost many games. If it were amature that might chance to recover lossess. But in MLB winning is everything. It makes fans happy and sponsors happy. That is all count.
They are morons because they were doing it wrong all those years. It's like you missed the whole point. Baseball use to be based on these old, archaic assumptions of skill and prowess. Compared against statistics, scouting intuition proved WORTHLESS. Of course they developed talent because that's how they always built teams. DUH. The reality is that they were looking at factors that weren't completely relevant for winning championships. You don't need the best runners, best pitchers, best hitters, or best anything to beat other teams. So long as your aggregate team has a higher player value, statistically you'll win if given enough games. Did you even watch the movie? You're mistaking coincidence with true understanding of what it takes to win a championship. Producing talent is a misnomer and unnecessary. It's always advantageous to have the best player available but in terms of this movie it wasn't necessary due to how nobody else understood baseball.
This clip is a great example of how to handle one's self in a meeting of any kind when indirect or direct insults are thrown your way. Granted he semi-loses it when saying "wtf", but overall, the skill and emotional management shown here is top. Most people would go completely insane if someone said "fortune cookie wisdom" to a presented idea. The ability to stay logical is rare, and I mean super rare. Most either completely lose their sh.. or will cower in embarrassment. It's rare to see this logical calmness in real life, which is why this clip is top notch.
This was a GREAT little movie, and it showed perfectly that the scouts had their heads in the sand like a bunch of ostriches. I loved the movie. And it demonstrated a perfectly good principle of management. When thinking INSIDE the box doesn't work, think OUTSIDE the box. It didn't hurt that the results of thinking outside the box brought up attendance to excellent levels. One of the lines is (as paraphrased here) the object of the game is to put people in the seats. And Billy Bean did that!
I heard the "...50 ft. of crap..." line from a Friends episode once. Rachel said it, and it was long before this movie's script was written. Funny that Jennifer Aniston was married to Brad Pitt at the time that episode was aired.
Brett Wilson I don't understand your sentiment there. Using a phrase that artfully describes their situation is effective whether you've heard it before or not.
I love these guy's quazo baseball discussion as if they are truly discussing something important like their experts. These guys are like old house wives who don't have shit Todo.
They're all focused on tools (size, speed, physical appearance, strength) instead of the things that really matter, assuming everyone they're picking from already has talent or tools to have gotten that far. At this point, it becomes about things like coachability, work ethic, response to criticism and instruction, and combining those with the tools in order to actually produce, which will show up and can be pointed to as to why players are good and teams win.
We've always done it this way! I fucking hate that mentality....every time I hear that in the workplace I jump on that person. It is such a small minded mentality.
I actually feel for the scouts here. They're baseball people who have probably spent 40+ years in their sport. Who are honestly doing their jobs the best they can and want to help their organization succeed. It must be pretty rough to hear your boss tell you, you don't know what you're doing.
