I see where he's coming from and he has a point but overall it's not a great take. 2001: 102-60 record, 28.0 batting fWAR (4th overall), 23.9 pitching fWAR (2nd overall) - The team lost Giambi, Damon and Isringhausen. 2002: 103-59 record, 23.1 batting fWAR (10th overall), 23.1 pitching fWAR (3rd overall) Clearly the pitching was stellar as he said, but losing 2 all-stars on offense is a heavy blow no matter what. They did well to minimize the loss to the batting fWAR. Something I didn't know until just now is that the team payroll still went up significantly from the 2001 season to the moneyball 2002 season. The team payroll went from $33.8m to $40.0m despite losing those three big ticket players.
