Adam Zuvanich says: 'Moneyball' makes solid contact, but not among All-Star baseball films

MIDLAND The Midland RockHounds are not mentioned in the movie “Moneyball,” but it still hits close to home for fans of West Texas’ Double-A franchise.

“Moneyball,” which hit theaters Friday, is an adaptation of Michael Lewis’ book by the same name. It’s about general manager Billy Beane and the Oakland A’s — the RockHounds’ parent club since 1999 — and how they use statistical analytics to evaluate players and compete against teams with greater financial resources.

The film focuses specifically on the 2002 season, when the A’s repeated as AL West Division champions despite losing three marquee players to teams with more money to spend on them. A few days before opening day that year, the A’s came to Midland and helped christen Citibank Ballpark with an exhibition game against the RockHounds.

Midland native Randy Velarde, who homered for the A’s in that exhibition game, is one of a few former RockHounds either portrayed, shown or discussed in “Moneyball.” Among the others are Eric Byrnes, Tim Hudson and Jeremy Brown, a former first-round draft pick of the A’s who spent three seasons in Midland.

The bit about Brown is among the funnier scenes in the film, which the RockHounds premiered in Midland on Tuesday as part of an arrangement with Sony Pictures.

“I thought it was really good. We got a lot of good feedback from our fans,” RockHounds general manager Monty Hoppel said. “I think Midland fans liked it, knowing the A’s affiliation.”

I thought it was pretty good, too, although I wouldn’t rank it among the best baseball movies of all time. There wasn’t really a sense of finality to it — the A’s lose in the first round of the playoffs, just like they did the year before, and Beane turns down a lucrative offer from the Boston Red Sox so he can keep plugging away in Oakland — and it was overly dramatic at times.

The lows felt a little too low for a 162-game season, and the high point also was a bit forced. The crescendo comes when Scott Hatteberg — one of the undervalued players Oakland acquires using the “Moneyball” system — hits a pinch-hit home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to lift the A’s to their AL-record 20th consecutive win.

As a baseball traditionalist, a couple other things didn’t sit well with me. Phillip Seymour Hoffman didn’t exactly nail the role of A’s manager Art Howe, with the gray buzz cut being about the only similarity between pudgy actor and slender subject. I’ve always viewed Howe as a mellow, even-tempered manager who smiles more than he scowls, whereas Hoffman’s character had a relaxed demeanor but also was defiant and disinterested at times.

Director Bennett Miller took liberal creative license with another one of the lead characters.

The real-life Beane hired Paul DePodesta, a former athlete at Harvard, as his assistant general manager and “Moneyball” mastermind. Beane’s right-hand man in the movie is Peter Brand, an overweight Yale graduate played by Jonah Hill who provides as much comic relief as sound scouting advice.

Speaking of comedy and scouts, the interaction between Beane, Brand and Oakland’s old-school talent evaluators were my favorite scenes. The scouts I’ve come across could have sat in for the actors who portrayed scouts, and they had some entertaining reactions to the modern, if not mechanical, scouting system introduced by Brand, which values on-base percentage over batting average, home runs, RBIs and every other offensive stat.

The locker room and on-field scenes were enjoyable, too, even though some of the A’s most prominent players in 2002 — namely AL MVP Miguel Tejada and AL Cy Young Award winner Barry Zito — are decidedly in the background of the film. It focuses more on first baseman Hatteberg, relief pitcher Chad Bradford and outfielders David Justice and Jeremy Giambi, who are cheap replacements for Johnny Damon, Jason Giambi and Jason Isringhausen.

The central figure is Beane, who is portrayed well by Brad Pitt. Beane was a first-round draft pick himself but largely a bust as a player — batting .219 with more strikeouts than hits in 148 major league games over six seasons — and how talent scouts whiffed on him is a recurring theme throughout the movie.

So is Beane’s family life and unwavering commitment to the unorthodox scouting system, which he still uses today and has been implemented by several other big-league organizations. The big-budget Red Sox adopted the same player evaluation methods after the 2002 season, and won their first World Series in 86 years two seasons later.

Beane and the A’s are still chasing a championship, and Midland is still a place where they try to develop championship-caliber players.

“When you talk about the A’s being in a small market and having a limited budget, Midland is the smallest Double-A market in the country,” Hoppel said. “We’ve got limited funds and compete against the big guys. So I can see comparisons on the minor league level. I think some things are similar.”

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