Armour and Levitt: Pennants pursued: How 2015 playoff teams got here
From SABR members Mark Armour and Dan Levitt at The Hardball Times on October 6, 2015:
Whether [Billy] Beane’s view of his job is completely accurate or not, most analysts agree on his main point. The most important job of a general manager (or baseball operations group) is to assemble a team that can finish in first place in its division, which gives you about a one-in-eight shot of winning the World Series. If you settle for one of the four wild card spots, it’s about one-in-16. Once you make it to the postseason, every team is good enough to win.
For the 10 teams still standing, the job of the baseball ops group is long over, and those people can only watch the games just like the rest of us. So it’s worth looking back at how they got their teams here.
Read the full article here: http://www.hardballtimes.com/pennants-pursued/
Originally published: October 8, 2015. Last Updated: October 8, 2015.