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  Moneyball

  Summary:

  Based on the nonfiction book by Michael Lewis, Moneyball chronicles the Oakland A's general manager Billy Beane as he attempt to assemble a baseball team on a lean budget by employing computer-generated analysis to acquire new players.

  Release Date:

  2011-09-23

  Budget:

  $50 million

  Cast:

  Brad Pitt, Jonah Hill, Robin Wright, Philip Seymour Hoffman, ​Chris Pratt2

  Director:

  Bennett Miller

  Genres:

  sport, Drama, Biography

  Rating:

  PG-13

  Runtime:

  133 minutes

  Writers:

  Aaron Sorkin, Steven Zaillian

  Studio(s):

  Sony

  Distributor(s):

  Sony

Summary

• Paul DePodesta's real-life story inspired Moneyball's Peter Brand, showcasing the impact of analytics in baseball management.
• Moneyball's depiction of the real Peter Brands contribution to sports management strategy, though fictional, wasn't wholly inaccurate, as Paul DePodesta revolutionized the game for teams like the Red Sox.
• Despite the success, Paul DePodesta faced challenges and criticism, but his net worth rose due to his transformative ideas in baseball.

Jonah Hill's character in Moneyball, Peter Brand, is based on a real person — baseball strategist Paul DePodesta, whose life story is just as interesting as the movie. Paul DePodesta was the inspiration for Jonah Hill's unexpected analytical mastermind Peter Brand in Moneyball, whose approach reinvents the fortunes of Billy Beane's (Brad Pitt) Oakland A's. While fiction, the real Peter Brand isn't that far from the movie character, as Paul DePodesta's net worth has skyrocketed due to his contributions to the game.

Moneyball considerably reinvented the real-life story of Paul and Billy Beane's journey to the cutting edge of sports management. The true story is what makes Moneyball such a great baseball movie, however, as it showcases how a fresh-out-of-Yale economics graduate inspires Beane to sign undervalued players and trades. While Billy Beane and Peter Brand's unique sabermetric method didn't win a title, other teams adopted it and won the World Series, changing sports management strategy for the better. However, the real Paul DePodesta and his role in changing baseball are slightly different to Moneyball.

Moneyball is available to stream on Netflix.

Who Is Paul DePodesta? The Inspiration For Jonah Hill's Moneyball Character Explained

How The Real Peter Brand's Revolutionary Use Of Mathematics Changed Baseball

Peter Brand in Moneyball is a fictionalized character loosely based on Paul DePodesta, a figure well known in the world of baseball. Paul DePodesta graduated from Harvard with an economics degree before working as a scout for Cleveland's baseball team, where he was plucked by Billy Beane to come personally fix the Oakland A's. Just as is shown through Jonah Hill's Peter Brand, he had an ace up his sleeve: a belief in a completely quantitative approach to running the team using "sabermetrics" (derived from the Society for American Baseball Research acronym "SABR").

Bill Beane and Paul DePodesta used this revolutionary approach to win 20 straight games on a shoestring budget with a philosophy built not around superstars, but around mathematical certainties

Brad Pitt's Moneyball character Bill Beane, who is real, and Paul DePodesta used this revolutionary approach to win 20 straight games on a shoestring budget with a philosophy built not around superstars, but around mathematical certainties (to the extent that it was possible), and their success would go on to influence professional sports of all kinds for years to come.

One thing Moneyball didn't change when creating the character of Peter Brand was that Paul DePodesta was at the heart of this evolution of sports management philosophy. After the success of the 2002 A's season that revolutionized the sport of baseball, the real Billy Beane and Paul DePodesta were primed to take big career steps, with DePodesta being brought in as the General Manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers at only 31 years old.

After navigating a successful '04 season, a combination of injuries, free agency departures of key personnel, and management decisions saw Los Angeles turn in its worst season in nearly a half-century in '05, and Paul DePodesta was fired.

After navigating a successful '04 season, a combination of injuries, free agency departures of key personnel, and management decisions saw Los Angeles turn in its worst season in nearly a half-century in '05, and Paul DePodesta was fired. Because of his status as a status-quo-shaking "maverick", the real Peter Brand was hounded by the sport's traditionalists, particularly in the media. Ultimately, they loudly proclaimed his failures to be evidence of the coldness and unrighteousness of analytics' influence on the sport. Despite this, teams like the Red Sox would subsequently win championships by building upon Paul DePodesta's methods.

The Real Peter Brand From Moneyball Continued To Revolutionize Baseball And Tried Acting, Too

Paul DePodesta Has Complicated Views Of His Fame

Paul DePodesta found fame an uneasy companion, and expressed disdain for Michael Lewis' book and how much his "trade secrets" were exposed.

After Moneyball's troubled development, which saw the arrival and departure of director Steven Soderbergh in the director's chair and actor/comedian Demetri Martin briefly pegged to play Paul DePodesta, the team of Brad Pitt, director Bennett Miller, and Jonah Hill got the wheels moving, with Aaron Sorkin hired to rewrite the script with Steven Zaillian. The rewriting saw Paul DePodesta decide Moneyball's version of "Paul DePodesta" was no longer true to life and requested that his name be removed from the character, which led to Jonah Hill playing Peter Brand.

This was perhaps compounded by the fact that Paul DePodesta found fame an uneasy companion, and expressed disdain for Michael Lewis' book and how much his "trade secrets" were exposed. Notably, DePodesta's story would achieve renewed attention with Moneyball's adaptation of the book originally published in 2003 to examine ground zero of the sabermetrics revolution.

Paul DePodesta even moved over to football when the NFL decided his analytics approach could be used to evolve their sport.

Whether his position was weakened by familiarity or not, the real Peter Brand continued to live life like the plot of a baseball movie by applying his unique abilities to positions with the San Diego Padres and New York Mets. Paul DePodesta even moved over to football when the NFL decided his analytics approach could be used to evolve their sport. He was hired by the Cleveland Browns as Chief Strategy Officer in 2016, and he's currently their de facto President, presiding over a recent turnaround in competitiveness for the franchise.

It was revealed that in 1995, while working for the Baltimore Stallions in the CFL, that Paul DePodesta also turned his hand to acting. He appeared as an uncredited extra in several episodes of Homicide: Life On The Streets as Officer McCormick. Ultimately, that childhood dream ended up being a funny footnote on one of sport's most enduring success stories. From Moneyball to the NFL, Paul DePodesta has left a sizable mark on the face of professional sports.

What Is Paul DePodesta’s Net Worth

The Real Peter Brand Still Makes A Living In Professional Sports

His contract with the Cleveland Browns was extended for five more years in 2020, with an estimated annual salary of $2 million.

Paul DePodesta's net worth is difficult to precisely determine, but based on what's known about him, DePodesta's overall current net worth is estimated to be around $10 million. Much of this is based on Paul DePodesta's current job as the Cleveland Browns' Chief Strategy Officer and de facto president. DePodesta got this job in 2016, and his contract with the Cleveland Browns was extended for five more years in 2020, with an estimated annual salary of $2 million.

What Paul DePodesta Thinks Of Peter Brand

Paul DePodesta Had Several Reasons For Not Wanting His Name Used In Moneyball

Since Jonah Hill plays Peter Brand, the fictionalized version of Paul DePodesta in Moneyball, there's been curiosity surrounding what the real-life strategist thinks of his movie counterpart. Paul DePodesta discussed his thoughts on Peter Brand in a 2016 nterview (via Nautilus) on the Moneyball movie and Jonah Hill's portrayal of him.

Paul DePodesta is modest about his achievements in the world of sports, but his contributions haven't gone unnoticed. When asked about how his initial goals aligned with that of his character in Moneyball, Paul DePodesta admitted that it wasn't his intention to upend sports analysis, rather he wanted to try and help the team at hand in a new way.

That being said, Paul DePodesta didn't want his real name to be used in the movie, and while he liked both the novel and the film, he ultimately felt that his portrayal was a caricature:

"I just didn’t feel comfortable that however I was going to be portrayed in the movie was going to be how 99.9 percent of the public imagined me to be, and would assume that whatever was in the movie was absolutely true, which it wasn’t. The other problem was I wasn’t all that interested in the attention. It had already happened from the book. And I didn’t necessarily need to relive it,"

Either way, Jonah Hill does a fantastic job as Peter Brand in Moneyball, even if his portrayal of Paul DePodesta wasn't that accurate.