Moneyball/Best scene/Brad Pitt/Billy Beane/Kerris Dorsey/Casey Beane

Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane is upset by his team's loss to the New York Yankees in the 2001 American League Division Series. 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 with Oakland's limited budget. During a visit to the Cleveland Indians, Beane meets Peter Brand, a young Yale economics graduate with radical ideas about how to assess player value. Beane tests Brand's theory by asking whether he would have drafted Beane out of high school; though scouts considered Beane hugely promising, his career in the major leagues was disappointing. Brand admits that, based on his method of assessing player value, he would not have drafted him until the ninth round. Impressed, Beane hires Brand as his assistant manager. Rather than relying on scouts' experience and intuition, Brand uses sabermetrics, selecting players based on their on-base percentage (OBP). Brand and Beane hire undervalued players such as unorthodox submarine pitcher Chad Bradford, aging outfielder David Justice, and an injured catcher, Scott Hatteberg. Oakland scouts are hostile toward the strategy, and Beane fires one, Grady Fuson, after he accuses him of destroying the team. Beane also faces opposition from Art Howe (Philip Seymour Hoffman), the Athletics' manager. With tensions already high between them due to a contract dispute, Howe disregards Beane's and Brand's strategy and plays a lineup he prefers. Early in the season, the Athletics fare poorly, leading critics to dismiss the new method as a failure. Brand argues their sample size is too small to conclude the method does not work, and Beane convinces the owner to stay the course. He trades away the lone traditional first baseman, Carlos Peña, to force Howe to use Hatteberg, threatening to make similar deals if Howe does not cooperate. The Athletics win 19 consecutive games, tying the longest winning streak in American League history. Though Beane does not watch games, his young daughter persuades him to attend the next game, against the Kansas City Royals, when Oakland is leading 11–0 after the third inning. Beane arrives in the fourth inning, only to watch the team falter and allow the Royals to even the score. Thanks to a walk-off home run by Hatteberg, the Athletics win a record-breaking 20th consecutive win. Beane tells Brand he will not be satisfied until they have "changed the game" by winning the championship using their system. The Athletics eventually clinch the 2002 American League West title but lose to the Minnesota Twins in the 2002 American League Division Series. Beane is contacted by the owner of the Boston Red Sox, who realizes that sabermetrics is the future of baseball. Beane declines an offer to become the Red Sox general manager, despite the $12.5 million salary, which would have made him the highest-paid general manager in history. He returns to Oakland. Two years later, the Red Sox win the 2004 World Series using the model the Athletics pioneered.

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