Heading into the 2002 season, so says Michael Lewis in Moneyball, then Oakland A´s assistant GM Paul DePodesta faced a serious task. With Jason Giambi, Jason Isringhausen and Johnny Damon the team was going to lose three core players to free agency, and Athletics GM Billy Beane wanted DePodesta to determine exactly what influence those three players had on the 102 wins the team had compiled in 2001. The idea was to offset these losses by signing other players with different skill sets that together would bring to the table what free agency had robbed the team.
Paul DePodesta decided to start by judging how many wins a team would need to make it to the play-offs.
“There aren´t a lot of teams that win ninety-five games and don´t make it to the play-offs,” he said. “If we win ninety-five games and dont make the play-offs, we´re fine with that.”According to Michael Lewis, he then calculated how many more runs the A´s would need to score than they allowed in order to win those 95 games. By using Bill James Pythagorean Theorem, he came up with a run differential of 135. Using the A´s players past performance, DePodesta then made reasoned arguments about how many runs the team would score and allow, but let´s leave him here since we already know what happened.
I wanted to find out if Paul DePodesta assumptions were right. Is 95 the magic number of games a teams needs to win to safely enter the postseason? And which run differential had historical teams brought into the play-offs?
To understand this, I conducted a littly study. You can find it in its entire length under the name of Gross Anatomy over there at Mikes Baseball Rants. I think its worth your time. I really think.