Moneyball Review: Jeremy Giambi

One of the key players in the movie Moneyball is Jason Giambi's little brother, Jeremy Giambi. In honor of Jeremy's birthday yesterday, it is time he got an article. The movie, while mostly accurate, was misleading on the Jeremy Giambi front. The movie sort of inferred that Je. Giambi was brought in at the beginning of the 2002 season to the dismay of scouts. This isn't really true. He played for the A's in both 2000 and 2001 as well. In those two years, he gave them a total of 1.3 WAR. As portrayed in the movie (it is highly unlikely that he was so whimsical on the trade, and it didn't make sense in the movie because Jonah Hill's character was against the trade), he was traded in the middle of the 2002 season for John Mabry. In the 2002 season, Je. Giambi posted a .4 WAR before the trade, and a 1.21 PPG and 2.4 PAPP, solid numbers. When John Mabry came in for Je. Giambi to finish the 2002 season, he posted a 2 WAR, a 2.71 PAPP, and a .89 PPG. These weren't near the numbers Je. Giambi put up, but he was better defensively (something that Beane declared he didn't care about in the movie). Mabry was making less at 500,000 (to Je. Giambi's 1 million), meaning the A's got better overall value from Mabry. However, according to the principles of Beane's Moneyball philosophy, this move didn't make a great amount of sense.