Oakland Athletics general manager Billy Beane is hurt 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 scouting 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 GM.
Rather than relying on scouts' experience and intuition, Brand uses sabermetrics, selecting players based on their on-base percentage (OBP) while ignoring their perceived weaknesses. Brand and Beane use this methodology to hire undervalued players such as unorthodox submarine pitcher Chad Bradford, aging outfielder David Justice, and injured catcher Scott Hatteberg.
Oakland scouts are hostile toward the strategy, and Beane fires head scout Grady Fuson after he accuses Beane of destroying the team. Beane also faces opposition from Art Howe, 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 more traditional lineup that he prefers.
Early in the season, the Athletics are already 10 games behind first, 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 team owner Stephen Schott to stay the course. He trades away the lone traditional first baseman, Carlos Peña, to force Howe to use Hatteberg, making similar deals so Howe has no choice but to play the team Beane and Brand have designed. Three weeks later, the Athletics are only 4 games behind first.
Two months later, the team starts an amazing winning streak. Beane famously does not watch games, but when they tie the American League record of 19 consecutive wins, his daughter persuades him to attend the next game, against the Kansas City Royals. Oakland is leading 11–0 when Beane arrives in the fourth inning, only to watch the Royals even the score. Thanks to a walk-off home run by Hatteberg, the Athletics achieve a record-breaking 20th consecutive win. Beane tells Brand he will not be satisfied until they have "changed the game" by winning the World Series 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, John W. Henry, 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 professional sports history. He returns to Oakland, and two years later the Red Sox win the 2004 World Series using the model the Athletics pioneered.
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