Oakland beat Pittsburgh 9-5 Wednesday afternoon for their fourteenth win in 64 tries, raising the season winning percentage to .219.

The question asked here every day is, “What is the probability of the team finishing with a lower winning percentage than the 1962 Mets, 40-120, a .250 winning percentage?”

To finish worse, the A’s need no more than 40 wins in total or 26-72 the rest of the season. I use two estimates of Oakland’s intrinsic winning percentage. The first is the highest winning percentage that includes 14 wins in a 95% confidence interval. For 64 games, that’s .339. The other estimate would be replacement level team, .296 (48 wins in a full season). Using those estimates, the probability of the Athletics finishing worse than the 1962 Mets ranges from .07 for the .339 value, .29 for the .296 value. So there second win in a row cut the generous probability in half. The probability is still close to 1 in 3 if they are really a replacement team.

They don’t play again until Friday, but their next seven games are against first place teams, the Brewers and the Rays.