Weekly postseason update

Most baseball sites do a weekly ranking of teams, I thought I'd do them one better and start ranking only the AL postseason contenders weekly (or some interval around there), by looking at the Baseball Prospectus playoff odds and considering all teams that have at least a 10% chance of playing into October.

Here are rankings for this week.  Note that I'm really only considering the players likely to impact postseason games - the top 4 starters, the top 4 relievers, etc.  Also note that WXRL on relievers stands for Wins Expected Above Replacement level.  I also noted how each teams odds have changed since last week.

No real surprises here.  The Yankees were clearly the best team amongst AL contenders last week, and they're beginning to lap the field.  In winning 6 of their 7 games over the past week, the Yankees bullpen has moved into the top spot, after allowing 5 runs in their past 26 2/3 innings (a stellar 1.69 ERA), and also being aided by an excellent defense (moving up to 2nd in defensive efficiency). 

The Angels are looking a lot like the Yankees of 2004-2008 - excellent offense, mediocre pitching, and poor defense (thanks, Bobby Abreu).  They carry a solid 1-2 punch of John Lackey and Jered Weaver in the rotation, but things fall off from considerably from there.  They also just released Justin Speier, who had actually been their 3rd best middle reliever. 

There's not much to say about the Red Sox, unless you can come up with something that rhymes with "Beckett and Lester and three days of......".  The offense and bullpen have sputtered, the three, four, and five spots in the rotation are a big question mark, and the defense has been horrible.

The Tigers have issues as well.  A stellar rotation boasts two pitchers having career season - Jarrod Washburn and Edwin Jackson - to go along with really, really low BABIPs - .252 for Washburn and.257 for Jackson.  You can expect some regression as the season wears on.  Rick Porcello has pitched as well as can be expected given his age.  Unfortunately, he's likely to surpass last year's innings total within his next two starts, so he may be a question mark going forward.  On the bright side, he has the tenth highest VORP of all Tigers hitters this year.