Prophecies Fulfilled

Last week, we talked about measuring teams' ability in the clutch and how that affects their record and SPI ranking. After all of that, I still maintained that luck played a large enough factor in the clutch that I didn't want to factor it into the SPI, saying that over time, it would take care of itself.

Lo and behold, it's done exactly that. The Angels and Braves were only separated by 0.381 points when I wrote last week's article, but their performance in the clutch was vastly different. Over the last week, each team has played differently enough that they are separated by nearly a point and a half. The Angels have won eight of their last ten, while the Braves have won just three and lost five straight. Each team is playing up (or down!) to their expectations. You can see that in the new SPI rankings - the Angels are now fifth, the highest they've been this season, while the Braves have fallen steadily to 17th.

Also of note: the Boston Red Sox, largely due to playing the Angels in six of their last 12 games (and losing them all), have lost their stranglehold on the #2 spot and fallen to third, giving the Chicago teams the top two spots. If they don't turn things around soon, they could find themselves below Philadelphia and even out of the list of contenders.