Blind test answer

Time's up! Here are the answers to yesterday's graph question:

Team A was the Tampa Bay Rays, who haven't seen their SPI score drop below 6.500 since early June. Team B was the Milwaukee Brewers, who didn't see their SPI consistently above 6.000 until late July. Both teams have the same number of playoff appearances in the last 10 years (zero). Both teams are looking like they're headed to the playoffs. And yet, everyone seems convinced that the Rays will fold, while everyone seems sold on the Brewers. I don't know about you, but it doesn't make a lot of sense to me. Sure, the Brewers are on the rise lately, but even when their SPI score was hovering around 5.5, people still talked about them like a playoff club. If I have to pick one of these two teams to go to the postseason, it's definitely the Rays. Some people may trust their gut instincts on things like this, but as for me, I'd prefer to stick with the numbers.

Side note: I changed the SPI standings to adjusted SPI standings, which weights the last ten games slightly more to account for recent performance. It changed the standings around a bit, but not nearly as much as I expected it to.