| Well, their pitching was pretty much the same (only 9 more runs allowed), but they scored 80 less runs (which is why their pythagorean W-L was so much lower).
The thing is, it was basically impossible to replace Giambi and Damon, but by signing players who were undervalued (Justice's OBP in 2002 was over .370, Jeremy Giambi's was .390), they were able to once again build a playoff team.
Essentially, what they did was realize that they were replacing one GREAT hitter (Giambi), one average hitter (Damon) and one terrible hitter (Saenz, who they moved to the bench), so they averaged out to a slightly above-average hitter.
and rather than say "we have to get somebody to replace Giambi" they said "we have to get three average to above-average hitters to replace those three guys". So, even though none of those 3 guys were nearly as good as Giambi, they were all better to Saenz, so their offense didn't suffer THAT much (although it did suffer some) |