How could you understand this film if you're not a baseball fan?

I'm not a fan at all.
Even though I didn't understand all the baseball terms I still understood the gist of it.
It's not like they are martians.
And it them going a different route, picking players based on stastistics alone, they did explain what you needed to know.
All else I guess is just further pleasure for those who actually follows the sport and knows the real story.

I don’t know much about baseball stats but still enjoyed this film. Maybe they should have had cameos of celebrities explain them, like they did for the financial terms in The Big Short.

I hate sports and don't fully understand baseball, but what helped me understand this movie was looking at Billy Beane's history a little bit. There were a lot of flashbacks to his earlier life and I wouldn't have made sense of it without that. I'm terrible at following plot.

Also, the book is very very interesting. After reading the book I understood a bit about baseball stats, and also the story of the specific people who came and went from the team.

But to summarize, the pro ball industry had rigid and antiquated ideas and wasn't measuring the right things to get the most out of their players. It was great to see their sexist idiocy exposed. And the stats were the coolest thing.

It's not what it's about, it's how it's about- Roger Ebert

It didn’t really require much knowledge of how the game of baseball is played. The scenes where Billy argues with his coaching staff veterans and about how more popular teams had more money to get “the best players.”

Then there’s also the strategy discussion when Beane and Peter are in the garage that helps. “Teams shouldn’t think of it as buying players, they should think of it as buying runs”
What should’ve been said “buying runs means wins” cause you do have to know that runs means points. If you don’t have that knowledge than it makes sense to be lost.

I don’t follow baseball at all, but I know the basics of how the game works. In the end, I loved it cause it’s the story of two guys who saw things a different way and proved a bunch of people wrong. (Granted, they didn’t invent sabermetrics)